For the second consecutive year, Memorial Hospital of Carbondale has been recognized as one of the nation’s top 100 hospitals, according to Solucient’s “100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success” study for 2005.
Every year, Solucient recognizes 100 hospitals across the nation for setting performance benchmarks in five critical performance areas: outcome of care, patient safety, efficiency, financial performance and growing community services. Each hospital in the study group is compared to groups according to size, teaching status, and residency program involvement.
“This designation is recognition for the hard work and dedication that our physicians and staff have done over the years,” said Tom Firestone, MD, president and CEO. “This award validates our thinking that we are on the right course and these efforts will translate into a strong delivery system that will benefit all of southern Illinois. Our commitment to quality and excellence has always been there, and it is good to know that others recognize this.”
According to the Solucient study, winning hospitals display balanced organizational performance—an ability to provide sustainable and reliable health care services to their communities.
Among key findings of the Solucient study, the top 100 hospitals:
Have a higher percentage of survival rates. If all acute hospitals performed at the same level as the nation’s benchmark hospitals, as many as 106,312 more Medicare patients could survive and an additional 117,000 patient stays could be complication-free each year - at an estimated annual savings of $7.6 billion. Treat sicker patients requiring more complex treatment, yet had better patient outcomes and lower costs. Salary and benefits were $1,500 per year higher per full-time staff member than at peer hospitals. Have better patient safety and are less likely to experience adverse outcomes.
The study scored hospitals according to nine organization-wide measures: riskadjusted mortality, risk-adjusted complications, patient safety, growth in patient volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay, expense per adjusted discharge, profit from operations, cash-to-debt ratio and tangible assets per discharge. Similar measures are tracked at Southern Illinois Healthcare facilities on a regular basis and reviewed by management and the Board of Trustees.
“The dashboards serve as a continuous indicator of our results and help us track our work. We are able to use these on a regular basis and they give us an indication of where we need to make improvements. It is all about delivering high quality affordable healthcare to our residents. Their trust and confidence in us is gratifying,” Firestone said.
“My congratulations and thanks to all of you for your efforts which has brought this type of recognition to our hospital, our medical staff, the management and staff of Memorial and the support staff of the system office,” said George Maroney , administrator, Memorial Hospital of Carbondale for the second consecutive year.”
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