March 18, 2008

CONTACT:
Communications Department
(320) 251-2700, ext. 74980

St. Cloud Hospital named one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals for third consecutive year

ST. CLOUD, Minn. – St. Cloud Hospital is one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals® for 2007. The recognition comes from Thomson Healthcare, a leading provider of information and solutions to improve the cost and quality of health care.

In the Top 100 program’s 15 years, St. Cloud Hospital has been recognized six times — in 1993, 1994, 1999, 2005, 2006, and 2007.

Top 100 Hospitals® have higher survival rates, keep more patients complication-free, and attract more patients while maintaining financial stability, according to Thomson, which estimates that if all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as the 100 Top Hospitals:

• More than 120,000 additional patients would survive each year;
• More than 138,000 patient complications would be avoided annually;
• Expenses would decline by an aggregate $6.2 billion a year;
• The average patient stay would decrease by more than half a day.

St. Cloud Hospital was honored in the “teaching hospitals” category. The only other Minnesota hospital named to the top 100 list is Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater, in the “small community hospitals” category. St. Cloud and Lakeview were the only Minnesota facilities recognized last year, as well.

“We are proud to be recognized as one of the 100 Top Hospitals in the country,” said St. Cloud Hospital President Craig Broman. “This award honors the caring, skilled professionals who carry out St. Cloud Hospital’s healing mission and recognizes their commitment to quality.”

“Employers, health plans, and hospitals need to take note that we have entered a new phase in driving transformation of the health care industry,” said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president in the Center for Healthcare Improvement at Thomson Healthcare. “Hospitals setting new levels of patient safety are those with the highest balanced scores across quality, efficiency, and financial performance — suggesting that payers that focus narrowly on cost alone, or any other single area of performance, are less likely to achieve the highest levels of improvement. Employers and payers need sophisticated, collaborative approaches to drive higher value from their hospital networks.”

The Thomson 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success study appears in the March 17 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.

Additional information can be found at www.100TopHospitals.org under “News/Press Room.”

# # #