News Release

UPMC NORTHWEST EARNS THIRD 100 TOP HOSPITALS AWARD

June 18, 2004 — UPMC Northwest is one of the nation’s best hospitals for the third straight year, according to a study that produces an annual listing of top-performing hospitals.

The 2003 Solucient 100 Top Hospitals award recognizes UPMC Northwest for superior clinical, operational, and financial performance, Solucient said in announcing the award winners. The award-winning hospitals treat more and sicker patients; their patients experience fewer complications, go home sooner, and have higher survival rates; and the top-performing hospitals provide care less expensively than non-winning hospitals, Solucient says.

This year’s honored hospitals also provide better end-of-life care, according to Solucient, which says the 100 Top Hospitals honorees are more likely than non-winning hospitals to discharge terminally ill patients to hospice services that provide specialized in-home care.

“The management teams at the 100 Top Hospitals have led their facilities to the highest performance levels in the nation by adopting new approaches that facilitate optimum care for patients, based on their real needs,” says Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president of Solucient’s Center for Healthcare Improvement that is responsible for the 100 Top Hospitals program. “The greater use of hospice services at these organizations is a reflection of this commitment.”

President Neil Todhunter says UPMC Northwest’s three straight awards are a tremendous achievement and a well-deserved tribute to the hospital’s people. “I’m extremely proud to be involved with an organization that has been able to achieve Top 100 Hospitals recognition three years in a row,” Todhunter says. “Our employees, medical staff, board, and volunteers all contribute to the continued success of UPMC Northwest, and their efforts clearly show when we earn awards like this.”

Solucient, an Illinois-based health care information company, named UPMC Northwest and the other award-winning hospitals based on verifiable Medicare and other performance and financial data that all U.S. hospitals must report. To earn recognition, UPMC Northwest had to outperform medium-sized community hospitals (100 to 249 beds) nationwide in several measures of patient care, operational, and financial performance including complication rates, death rates, length of stay, expenses, profitability, and growth in the percentage of the community they serve.

One key finding in Solucient’s analysis of hospitals: if all acute care hospitals performed at the same level as the award-winning facilities, 95,000 more Medicare patients could survive and an additional 77,000 patients could be complication-free every year. Further, Solucient said, the improved performance would produce an estimated annual savings of $8.8 billion.

Solucient’s goal in presenting the 100 Top Hospitals awards is to improve hospital care by establishing top performance benchmarks and encouraging hospitals to meet the standards set by the best-performing hospitals.

UPMC Northwest is one of only 20 medium-sized community hospitals out of more than 1,000 nationwide to earn 100 Top Hospitals recognition for 2003. Also among the current award-winning hospitals: 15 major teaching hospitals and 25 teaching hospitals (mostly metropolitan and university medical centers), 21 (due to a tie) large community hospitals (more than 250 beds), and 20 small community hospitals (25 to 99 beds).

In addition to its three consecutive awards for overall performance excellence, UPMC Northwest also earned 100 Top Hospitals awards for excellence in two specialties, orthopedics (1998) and stroke care (1999).

Two other UPMC hospitals – UPMC Presbyterian and UPMC St. Margaret – also earned places on this year’s 100 Top Hospitals honor roll.

A story on the awards and a list of the top-performing hospitals was published in Modern Healthcare magazine.