Inside Duke Medicine

DUH wins two national performance awards

Duke University Hospital has won two national awards for excellence in patient care and overall performance.

The 2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks Award placed DUH among the nation’s top 100 hospitals for highest hospital-wide performance compared with national peers.

Selection was based on an overall score on Thomson Reuters’ 100 Top Hospitals National Balanced Scorecard, statistical measurements from five critical areas: clinical process and outcomes, patient safety, patient perception of care, operational efficiency and financial stability.

DUH also won a 2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals: Everest Award for National Benchmarks. The new award recognizes hospital leaders who developed and executed strategies that sparked the highest rate of long-term improvement, resulting in the country’s highest performance at the end of five years. Only 23 winners were selected this year. The award means DUH and the other hospitals ranked in the top 10 percent across all measures of performance.

DUH was the only major teaching hospital in North Carolina to receive either award and was among only four nationally to receive the Everest Award.

“As an institution, our quest is to continue to innovate new ways for improving the care we deliver to each patient we serve,” said a message to DUH staff and physicians from Chief Operating Officer and Interim Chief Executive Officer Kevin W. Sowers, MSN, RN, FAAN; Chief Nursing and Patient Care Services Officer Mary Ann Fuchs, MSN, RN; and Chief Medical Officer Steven Olson, M.D.

“Our leadership team supports structured performance improvement strategies and a balanced set of indicators of success that focus on priorities aligned under the four headings of Clinical Quality, Customer, Work Culture and Finance. When you have employees with the best concern for our patients at heart – employees who understand the need for a balanced view of success — it doesn’t go unrecognized. We appreciate your commitment to continually improving the Duke Hospital patient experience. You have made this a successful institution in the eyes of our patients and among our peers, and, each day, we become a better place because of you.”

The winning hospitals, announced in the March 30 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine, were identified through a Thomson Reuters study of 3,000 short-term, acute-care, non-federal hospitals. The study focused on 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 study concluded that, if all Medicare patients received the same level of care as Medicare patients 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.

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

Thomson Reuters provides information for businesses and professionals in the fields of law, finance, science, health care and the media.

To read more about the awards, visit: http://www.100tophospitals.com/