Improvements in patient care and satisfaction at River Region Medical Center during last year’s fourth quarter have moved it past its parent firm’s only other holding in Mississippi, chief operations officer Glenn T. Carney said Wednesday.

Favorable ratings for patients who answered surveys on visits for surgery, heart attacks, pneumonia and heart failure averaged 98.93 percent for the period, according to internal numbers Carney presented during an address to the Vicksburg Lions Club. The figures update aspects of one of four categories of hospital performance reported to the Department of Health and Human Services, which averaged 94.7 through March 2010.

The year-end rates put River Region ahead of Wesley Medical Center in Hattiesburg, also owned by Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems.

“We, just this quarter, surpassed them,” Carney said, adding official recognition within the company must come with sustained ratings for six months. He said River Region ranks 14th among the 126 hospitals operated by CHS in care process measures ratings, which are reported to the Medicare and Medicaid arms of the federal Cabinet department by hospitals nationwide.

Death rates and re-admissions among heart attack and pneumonia patients, medical imaging use and hospital experiences are also reported to the department.

Patient experiences during hospital stays at River Region reflected favorable ratings about 70 percent of the time, according to data compiled from April 2009 through March 2010. Available mortality rates from Medicare data deaths of heart attack and heart failure patients discharged between July 2006 and June 2009 were at or near the national average — 16.3 percent of 158 heart attack patients and 11.8 percent of 436 heart failure patients.