Aug. 9, 2007

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St. Cloud Hospital awarded the 100 Top Hospitals Performance Improvement Leader by Thomson Healthcare

ST. CLOUD, Minn. – St. Cloud Hospital recently was named one of the nation’s top performance improvement leader hospitals by Thomson Healthcare, a leading provider of information and solutions to improve the cost and quality of health care.

The award recognizes the top 100 hospitals making the greatest progress in improving hospital-wide performance during five consecutive years (2001-2005). The study is designed to identify hospital leaders -- CEOs, executive teams and boards -- that have instilled a true culture of performance improvement across their organization. Improvements are measured in clinical outcomes, safety, hospital efficiency, financial stability, and growth.

“This award is testament to the commitment by physicians and staff to provide patients with high-quality care day in and day out,” said Mary Buhl, director of Performance Improvement for St. Cloud Hospital. “Their integrity in service to the community they work in and live in is reflected in a very tangible way by this award.”

Performance Improvement Leaders (PI Leaders), as shown by objective statistical national comparisons, have led their organizations to improve hospital-wide performance consistently, year-after-year, at a substantially faster rate than peers across the United States. The PI Leaders study is the first to measure the rate and consistency of hospital-wide performance improvement nationally, based on both management and clinical outcomes over five consecutive years.

Research highlights

• Decreased patient deaths, complications, and adverse safety events.
• Increased their expenses by only 6 percent, a rate significantly below cost of living increases. Peer hospitals’ expenses, meanwhile, increased 18 percent.
• Grew their outpatient services more quickly and consistently than their peers.
• Rose from being unprofitable to maintaining a healthy positive profit margin of 5.9 percent.
• Discharged patients almost a day earlier, while increasing patient understanding.

St. Cloud Hospital was honored in the “teaching hospitals” category. The only other Minnesota hospital named to the top 100 list is Lake Region Hospital in Fergus Falls, in the “small community hospitals” category.

More information on this study and other 100 Top Hospitals research is available at www.100tophospitals.com.

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