UHC awards Rising Star honors to hospitals at 2012 annual conference

UHC has awarded its Rising Star honors to Duke University Hospital, Medical University of South Carolina, Shands Jacksonville Medical Center, and Cleveland Clinic during the UHC Annual Conference 2012 in Orlando, Fla. The award recognizes significant improvements and exemplary performance in patient safety, mortality, clinical effectiveness, and equity of care as defined in UHC's Quality and Accountability Study.

"UHC congratulates these hospitals for successfully focusing on health care quality and accountability improvement," said Irene M. Thompson, UHC president and chief executive officer. "This Rising Star achievement is especially notable because other academic medical centers are also working in earnest to improve patient safety and quality, and thus it has become quite difficult to stand out among more than 100 peer organizations."

UHC's Quality and Accountability Study was designed to help academic medical centers identify structures and practices that are associated with high performance in quality and safety.