UConn Advance - March 19, 2007 - Health Center ranked among top 100 hospitals

The Health Center was named one of the nation’s top 100 hospitals, according to the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success study for 2006.

It is one of only 15 hospitals nationwide recognized in the major teaching hospital category.

Now in its 14th year, the Solucient study is considered one of the hospital industry’s most prestigious awards.

It uses a scorecard based on objective statistical measurement of performance in critical areas including clinical outcomes, patient safety, operational efficiency, and growth in patient volume. Winning hospitals display an ability to provide sustainable and reliable health care services to their communities.

The ranking is based on data from 2005.

“This honor reflects the extraordinary hard work and complete commitment of our physicians, nurses, and other medical staff to be the very best when it comes to patient care, quality, and medical innovation,” says Dr. Peter J. Deckers, executive vice president for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine.

“Our efforts to gain approval of a replacement hospital are clearly supported by this latest recognition of the quality of care at the UConn Health Center,” Deckers adds.

“A hospital that achieves this level of excellence, despite its facility shortcomings, must be allowed to thrive in the future.”

This is the third consecutive year the Health Center has been recognized by Solucient. During the previous two years, the Health Center was named a Solucient Top 100 Performance Leader nationwide.

That award recognizes senior management teams who have led their organizations to achieve the fastest rate of consistent annual improvement.

The 100 Top Hospitals study scores hospitals according to nine key organization-wide measures: risk-adjusted mortality, risk-adjusted complications, patient safety, growth in percentage of the community served, severity-adjusted average length of stay, expense per adjusted discharge, profit from operations, cash-to-debit ratio, and tangible assets per discharge.

According to Solucient’s key findings, if all inpatients received the same level of care as those in the top 100 hospitals, there would be:

Higher survival rates. More than 100,000 additional patients would survive each year.
Fewer complications. An additional 114,000 patient complications would be avoided.
Money saved in healthcare costs. Expenses would decline by an aggregate $10.9 billion per year. The Top 100 Hospital facilities spent an average of 12 percent less, per discharge, than peer hospitals.
Patients would go home more quickly. The average patient stay would decrease by more than half a day.

Solucient, a company that specializes in compiling and analyzing healthcare information, performs the study annually at its own expense, to share the new standards being set by the hospital industry.

More information is available at http://www.100tophospitals.com.

Health Center ranked among top 100 hospitals

by Carolyn Pennington - March 19, 2007