St. John's Named Top 100 Improvement Leaders Hospital
St. John’s Regional Medical Center was named one of the nation's top performance improvement leader hospitals by Thomson Healthcare (formerly Solucient), the leading provider of decision support solutions that help organizations across the healthcare industry improve sclinical and business performance.
St. John’s and its senior management team were recognized for being one of a hundred hospitals making the greatest progress in improving hospital-wide performance over five consecutive years (2001-2005). The 2006 Thomson 100 Top Hospitals®: Performance Improvement Leaders have set national benchmarks for the rate and consistency of improvement in clinical outcomes, safety, hospital efficiency, financial stability, and growth. St. John’s and its medical staff have made major strides in increasing the quality and efficiency of services locally.
Efforts at St. John’s Regional Medical Center are part of a broader, national movement to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare spurred by the Institute of Medicine’s 2001 publication of "Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century," a book that described quality issues and proposed six goals for healthcare delivery.
Partly as a result of this landmark study, a number of organizations began developing programs to improve hospital patient safety, including the 100,000 Lives Campaign by The Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and the Quality Alliance.
Findings from the fourth edition of the Thomson 100 Top Hospitals®: Performance Improvement Leaders study appear in the August 6, 2007, issue of Modern Healthcare magazine.
“This has been a very exciting year for St. John’s. This award as a 100 Top Performance Improvement Leader for 2006, is especially rewarding for us. This recognition shows our long-term progress in improving our patient outcomes, quality measures, and financial performance,”said Debbie Linnes, St. John’s President and CEO. “This award distinguishes us as a leader that brings increasing value to the community year after year. When people have a choice, we want them to think of St. John’s as the quality leader, and this latest award represents our dedication to excellence in every aspect. Our continued success would not be possible without the tremendous efforts and commitment of our medical staff, employees and volunteers.”
"The leadership of the hospital and all of the people who work there have heard the national call to increase the pace of improvement for patients across the nation. Their efforts to improve performance have resulted in consistent year-over-year improvement that is among the fastest rate in the nation for its type of hospital," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president, 100 Top Hospitals programs, Center for Healthcare Improvement, Thomson Healthcare. "This means that your local hospital has found the key to continually improving the health services for the people in the community."
The Thomson 100 Top Hospitals: Performance Improvement Leaders study analyzed acute care hospitals nationwide using detailed empirical performance data from years 2001 through 2005, including publicly available Medicare MedPAR data, Medicare cost reports, and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) outpatient data. Facilities recognized on the PI Leader list are represented across five hospital classes:
- Major Teaching - 15
- Teaching - 25
- Large Community, 250+ Beds - 20
- Medium Community, 100 to 249 Beds - 20
- Small Community, 25 to 99 Beds - 20
The study looked at all U.S. hospitals licensed to treat Medicare patients. Eight performance measures were examined at each hospital: risk-adjusted mortality and complications, average length of stay, expenses, profitability, cash-to-debt ratio, growth in patient volume, and risk-adjusted patient safety index. The study used publicly available Medicare cost reports, MedPAR data, and CMS outpatient data from 2001 – 2005.
St. John's Regional Medical Center is a 367-bed facility, serving 19 counties in Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas, providing state-of-the-art healthcare services, specializing in cardiology, orthopedics, neurosciences, and oncology. St. John’s has been leading the way in healthcare throughout the four-state area for more than 100 years and has earned the Gold Seal of Approval from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).
About Thomson Healthcare
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More information on this study and other 100 Top Hospitals research is available at www.100tophospitals.com.