News Release

UPMC NORTHWEST EARNS FOURTH 100 TOP HOSPITALS AWARD

March 4, 2005 — UPMC Northwest is one of the nation’s best hospitals for the fourth straight year, according to a study that produces an annual listing of top-performing hospitals.

And this time there’s an added distinction. For being one of the most consistent winners of the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals award, UPMC Northwest has earned a place on an even more elite list of hospitals: Solucient’s Best of the Benchmark Hospitals, which is limited exclusively to those “best of the best” hospitals that have achieved 100 Top Hospitals awards four or more times.

The 89 Best of the Benchmark Hospitals “form a very select group,” Solucient said in announcing its 12th annual awards for superior patient care, operational and financial performance. Their performance consistency “provides their communities with extremely reliable care. These are hospitals that have successfully instilled performance improvement in all employees, physicians and managers. The beneficiaries are the patients they serve and their families.”

Being recognized again as one of the nation’s best-performing hospitals is “great news,” according to UPMC Northwest president Neil Todhunter, who says it’s especially gratifying to earn a place on Solucient’s exclusive list of hospitals that have received multiple 100 Top Hospitals awards.

“We thought it was quite an achievement to get this award once, but to do it four times, and then to earn special recognition as one of the ‘best of the best’ on top of that, is a great accomplishment for the hospital and our staff,” Todhunter said.

“This kind of recognition says a lot about the quality of care we provide, our financial strength, how effectively we operate the hospital, and UPMC Northwest’s value to the community,” Todhunter said, crediting the hospital’s people for making UPMC Northwest an award-winning health care facility.

The four straight awards are “a tribute to everyone who’s part of our organization – employees, physicians, board members, auxiliary and volunteers – and what they do for our patients, the hospital and the communities we serve.”

UPMC Northwest and other hospitals that earned a place on Solucient’s 100 Top Hospitals honor roll for 2004 “have set the bar much higher for patient outcomes, patient safety, operational performance and improved value for the community,” says Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president of Solucient’s Center for Healthcare Improvement that is responsible for the 100 Top Hospitals program. “To achieve these new benchmarks, the whole organization – not just one clinical service line – must be aligned to achieve performance improvement goals. The board of trustees, the management team, and the entire hospital and medical staff must align their efforts over years to reach national benchmark levels of performance.”

Another Solucient official says the impact of award-winning hospitals on their communities is “strikingly different” than that of non-winning hospitals. “The study shows that if all acute care hospitals performed at the same level as the nation's benchmark hospitals, as many as 66,342 more Medicare patients could survive and an additional 66,506 patient stays could be complication-free each year — at an estimated annual savings of $6.2 billion," says David Foster, PhD, Solucient’s vice president of clinical informatics.

Solucient, an Illinois-based health care information company, named UPMC Northwest and the other award-winning hospitals based on verifiable 2003 Medicare and other performance and financial data that more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals must report. To earn recognition, UPMC Northwest had to outperform more than 1,000 other medium-sized community hospitals (100 to 249 beds) nationwide in several measures of performance including complication rates, death rates, patient safety, length of stay, expenses, profitability, and cash to total debt ratio.

UPMC Northwest is one of only 20 medium-sized hospitals to make the 2004 100 Top Hospitals list. Also making the list are 15 major teaching hospitals and 25 teaching hospitals (mostly metropolitan and university medical centers), 20 large community hospitals (more than 250 beds), and 20 small community hospitals (25 to 99 beds).

On Solucient’s separate Best of the Benchmark Hospitals honor roll – which includes only those organizations that have earned four or more 100 Top Hospitals awards – UPMC Northwest is one of only 17 medium-sized community hospitals listed.

Commenting further on these “best of the best” hospitals, Solucient said their financial indicators “suggest very effective business and clinical strategies for growth of services. Their clinical outcomes and efficient care delivery prove that strategic decisions are made with balanced consideration for both patient care quality and business impact on the organization. These consistent winners are aware of the needs of their communities and take action to meet them through community outreach. The result, we think, is chronically high performance and provision of exceedingly dependable and sound care to the communities they serve.”

The Best of the Benchmark Hospitals “perform differently” than other hospitals, according to Solucient, which says they have achieved “higher survival rates with fewer patient complications and adverse outcomes and at lower costs than their peers. They have been pioneers in efficiency, by sending patients back home sooner and delivering care in alternative, more convenient, and lower cost settings.”

Also, Solucient says, “these hospitals have expanded their outpatient services, achieving equal or better results with less invasive, less risky, and less expensive surgical alternatives. Finally, these hospitals have been early, successful adopters of proven new technologies, bringing the best possible treatment options to their communities.”

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.

In addition to its four 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).

One other UPMC hospital – UPMC St. Margaret in Pittsburgh – also earned a place 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 the February 28 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.