01/27/2012: "PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center Award"

HealthGrades, the nation's leading independent healthcare ratings organization, has named PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence™ in 2012. This prestigious distinction places PeaceHealth St. Joseph among the Top 5% of hospitals nationwide for clinical performance.

PeaceHealth St. Joseph is one of only five hospitals in Washington state to receive the clinical excellence award. In addition, multiple patient care areas earned top ratings for outcomes.

“This is truly impressive and an honor our caregivers can rightly be proud of, as PeaceHealth St. Joseph received 5-star ratings in 19 areas of patient care,” said Nancy Steiger, CEO and Chief Mission Officer for PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center. “It is a strong testament to our vision that each patient receive safe, evidence-based compassionate care; every time, every touch.”

The “HealthGrades Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence” study, released yesterday, objectively identifies those hospitals with the best overall clinical performance across all 26 medical diagnoses and procedures that the organization rates. These 263 top-performing hospitals represent only 5% of the nation’s hospitals and each is designated as a HealthGrades Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence™.

“PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center can be proud of the contributions of its physicians, nurses and staff in achieving outstanding patient care,” said Kristin Reed, MPH, HealthGrades vice president of hospital ratings and author of the study. “Residents of Northwest Washington are fortunate to have access to some of the highest quality hospital care in the nation.”

Unlike other hospital quality studies, HealthGrades evaluates hospitals solely on clinical outcomes: risk-adjusted mortality and in-hospital 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 their study this year, 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% in the nation) such as PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center outperform 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% lower risk-adjusted mortality rate and a 1.86% 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 in-hospital 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.

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.

PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center, which includes a not-for-profit full-service hospital
sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, is part of the PeaceHealth system with medical centers in Alaska, Washington and Oregon. In addition to the hospital and PeaceHealth Medical Group, PeaceHealth’s local services include several Centers of Excellence, Whatcom Hospice, a diagnostic laboratory, a joint venture outpatient imaging service, a specialty clinic in Sedro-Woolley and a critical access hospital being developed on San Juan Island.