Truven Health Analytics™ today named Sutter Health hospitals—Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento (SMCS) and Sutter Tracy Community Hospital (STCH)—as two of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals.
The Truven Health 100 Top Hospitals® study identifies hospitals and leadership teams that provide the highest level of value to their communities, based on a national balanced scorecard. Truven, a leading provider of data-driven analytics and solutions to improve the cost and quality of healthcare, has conducted this study annually since 1993.
"Our hospitals and doctor groups consistently rank among California's highest performers," said Stephen Lockhart, M.D., Ph.D., Sutter Health Chief Medical Officer. "Our entire not-for-profit network congratulates these Sutter hospitals for earning these prestigious recognitions."
This is the fifth time SMCS received this honor, and the first time STCH won the award.
SMCS also earned the Top 100 Hospitals Everest® Award—one of only 17 hospitals in the nation and the only hospital in California to simultaneously set the national benchmark for both "balanced excellence in a single year" and "greatest improvement over five consecutive years."
"Winning the Everest Award shows our continued improvement. We're enhancing the patient care experience and becoming more efficient year after year," said Carrie Owen Plietz, Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento, CEO. "With the opening of our new Anderson Lucchetti Women's and Children's Center and the complete remodel of Sutter General Hospital this summer, we will provide our patients with Top 100 health care in a comprehensive medical center built for the future. What an exciting time—not just for us, but for the entire Sacramento region!"
"We consistently focus on improving our performance on core measures, and it's that focus that results in high-quality, more efficient care for our Tracy-area residents,"said Dave Thompson, Sutter Tracy Community Hospital CEO. "Everyone here – our nurses, physicians and staff – shares a deep sense of commitment and pride to provide the highest value and personalized care to everyone who comes through our doors."
The 100 Top Hospitals balanced scorecard measures overall organizational performance across 11 key analytic measures including patient care, operational efficiency and financial stability.
To conduct the 100 Top Hospitals study, Truven Health researchers evaluated close to 3,000 short-term, acute-care, nonfederal hospitals. Hospitals do not apply and winners do not pay to market this honor.
"This year's 100 Top Hospitals represent the highest national standards in hospital care and management today. They set the benchmarks for peers around the country to follow—consistently delivering outstanding quality of care, satisfaction and community value at a reasonable cost," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and the 100 Top Hospitals program at Truven Health Analytics. "The majority of the 2015 award winners have produced year-to-year performance improvement, as well. This speaks to the consistent focus on excellence by the entire organization and the men and women who serve patients."
The study shows that if all hospitals in the U.S. performed at the level of this year's winners:
- 126,471 additional lives could be saved
- 108,926 additional patients could be complication-free
- $1.8 billion in inpatient costs could be saved
- The average patient stay would decrease by half a day
- Episode-of-illness expense would be 2 percent lower than the peer average
Modern Healthcare magazine announced the winning hospitals in its March 2 edition.
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