March 30, 2009

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St. Cloud Hospital ranks in nation’s top 100, only Minnesota hospital recognized with Everest Award

ST. CLOUD, Minn. – For the fourth consecutive year, and the seventh time since the recognition program began in 1993, St. Cloud Hospital has been ranked among the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals.

Thomson Reuters, the company that administers the award, also honored St. Cloud Hospital with its new “Everest Award for National Benchmarks.” The 23 Everest Award winners have reached the highest level of accomplishment on the 100 Top Hospitals national balanced scorecard – balanced performance combined with the fastest rates of long-term improvement.

St. Cloud Hospital is the only Minnesota hospital to win the Everest Award and one of only four to rank in the top 100. The others are Mayo Clinic – Saint Marys Hospital in Rochester, Douglas County Hospital in Alexandria and Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater.

“The 100 Top Hospitals recognition and the Everest Award affirm for the people of Central Minnesota that St. Cloud Hospital provides exceptional care in a cost-effective manner,” said Craig Broman, St. Cloud Hospital president. “These honors are especially gratifying coming just a few weeks after St. Cloud Hospital was re-designated as a Magnet hospital for nursing excellence.”

The Thomson Reuters “100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks” study is based on a scorecard that evaluates performance in nine areas: mortality, medical complications, patient safety, average length of stay, expenses, profitability, cash-to-debt ratio, patient satisfaction and adherence to clinical standards of care.

"The 100 Top Hospitals winners raised the bar again this year, delivering a higher level of reliable care and greater value for their communities and payers," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs at Thomson Reuters.

"The boards, executives and physician leaders of the Everest award-winning hospitals developed long-term strategies and executed them with extraordinary skill and extraordinary results," she said. "The Everest award winners have reached the point at which innovation is a must to improve further."

To conduct the 100 Top Hospitals study, Thomson Reuters researchers evaluated 3,000 short-term, acute care, non-federal hospitals. They used public information - Medicare cost reports, Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) data, and core measures and patient satisfaction data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Compare data set.

If all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as patients treated in the winning hospitals:

• More than 107,500 additional patients would survive each year.
• Nearly 132,000 patient complications would be avoided annually.
• Expenses would decline by $5.9 billion a year.
• The average patient stay would decrease by nearly half a day.
  

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

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