Healthgrades recently released a list of the best hospitals in the country. With their report, they took a look at the processes, goals and strategies used by the country’s leading hospitals. As priorities throughout the nation continue focusing on the improvement of hospital quality, experts at Healthgrades expressed pleasure in recognizing the facilities with the highest performance ratings. These included non-profit facilities, for-profit hospitals and educational medical centers.
Experts at Healthgrades said that if the standards they used to measure quality for 2015 had been used in recent years, more than 170,000 lives may have been saved. Patients who are treated in hospitals earning Healthgrades’ top award have more than a 25 percent higher chance of surviving than if they were treated in facilities that did not earn the award.
Healthgrades stated that the nation’s top hospitals build a practice and culture of exceeding today’s requirements of CMS core measures. They also believe that these hospitals are able to see opportunities and issues ahead of time with possible applications before accountability is required. Decisions are made based on evidence in these hospitals. By using data-driven protocols to analyze, track, measure and adjust for the best possible outcomes, they are able to maintain the highest ratings. Collaboration is also a key factor earning these facilities their top spots on the list. When lines of communication are open, this reinforces collaborative efforts and builds trust between different units in the hospitals.
Experts at Healthgrades said that the main takeaway point in their survey was the importance of leadership and tenacity being necessities for sustaining the best outcomes and for assisting practitioners in delivering the best quality of clinical care to their patients. Since not all hospitals are the same, Healthgrades commended the organizations working hard to achieve distinctions and also urged all Americans to research hospitals before selecting a main facility to use for regular care.
To qualify for the list of the top 50 hospitals in the nation, a hospital must rank in the top 1 percent for having consistent clinical excellence, which is factored by risk adjustments in mortality along with the rates of complications seen in common conditions and everyday procedures. In addition to this, the hospitals must have received the top clinical awards for the past several years.
Qualification for the list of the top 100 hospitals requires hospitals to have earned awards for at least the past few years. The hospitals earning this distinction are in the top 2 percent of the nation based on consistency in clinical quality. With the top 50 hospitals described in the paragraph above, the additional 50 beyond that make up the top 100. In addition to having earned awards for a few consecutive years, the top 100 hospitals must have a volume-weighted z-score for up to 32 procedures and conditions but no less than 21. View a list of the top 50 and 100 hospitals from Healthgrades by clicking here or visiting www.healthgrades.com/quality/top-hospitals-2015.
Alan Wang is the President of UBF and serves as the lead consultant. He has delivered the UBF solution set throughout the world and is highly regarded for his areas of expertise. You can follow him on Twitter @UBFconsulting.