Quality Study Identifies Owensboro Health Remains Amid Top 5 Percent
Hospital Receives Clinical Excellence Award for Fourth Consecutive Year
Owensboro, KY. (January 24, 2012) – Owensboro Health announced today that HealthGrades, a leading source of health care provider information, has named it a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence™ for the 4th consecutive year. This prestigious distinction places Owensboro Health among the top 5 percent of hospitals nationwide for clinical performance. Owensboro Health is one of only two hospitals to receive this award in Kentucky.
HealthGrades Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence study, released today, identifies those hospitals with the best overall clinical performance across 26 medical diagnoses and procedures that the organization rates. The 263 top-performing hospitals represent only 5 percent of the nation’s hospitals, and each is designated as a HealthGrades Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence™.
“Owensboro Health can be proud of the contributions of its physicians, nurses and staff in achieving outstanding patient care,” said Kristin Reed, HealthGrades vice president of hospital ratings and author of the study. “The Owensboro community is fortunate to have access to some of the highest quality hospital care in the nation.”
Catharine Schmitt, MD, an OB/GYN and chair of the Medical Staff Quality Committee, said Owensboro Health's move toward quality improvement began more than eight years ago and reflects a cultural shift where the primary focus is on quality and patient safety.
“The improvements are a result of careful and thoughtful processes that include following evidence-based care and other initiatives undertaken by our hospital,” Schmitt said. If we improve quality everything else falls into place.”
Unlike other hospital quality studies, HealthGrades evaluates hospitals solely on clinical outcomes: risk-adjusted mortality and inhospital complications. HealthGrades’ analysis is based on approximately 40 million Medicare discharges for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010. Using these top-performing hospitals as a benchmark in this year’s HealthGrades study, HealthGrades quantifies the impact of differences in hospital quality in terms of lives lost and unexpected complications.
The HealthGrades study found that:
- Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence (Top 5 percent in the nation), such as Owensboro Health, outperformed all other hospitals across all of the 17 mortality cohorts and six of nine complication cohorts studied from 2008 through 2010.
- Specifically, Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence had a 30.07 percent lower risk-adjusted mortality rate and a 1.86 percent lower risk-adjusted in-hospital complication rate among Medicare beneficiaries compared to all other hospitals.
- In fact, if all hospitals performed at the level of Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence, 165,704 Medicare lives could potentially have been saved and 6,800 Medicare inhospital complications could potentially have been avoided.
HealthGrades Hospital Quality Distinctions
As part of this study, HealthGrades evaluates each of the nation’s 5,000 nonfederal hospitals in 26 procedures and diagnoses, allowing individuals to compare their local hospitals online at www.healthgrades.com. HealthGrades hospital quality distinctions are independently created; no hospital can opt-in or opt-out of being evaluated, and no hospital pays to be evaluated. Mortality and complication rates are risk adjusted, which takes into account differing levels of severity of patient illness at different hospitals and allows for hospitals to be compared equally.
About HealthGrades
HealthGrades, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, is a leading provider of comprehensive information about physicians and hospitals. More than 200 million consumers use the HealthGrades websites, including HealthGrades.com and BetterMedicine.com, to research, select, and connect with a physician or hospital, and use its comprehensive information about clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction, patient safety, and health conditions to make more informed healthcare decisions and take action. Find more information about our products and services at HealthGrades.com. Follow us on Twitter (@HealthGrades) and Facebook for news and updates. More information on how HealthGrades guides Americans to their best health can be found at www.healthgrades.com.
