St. Mary’s Hospital Receives National Honors for Providing Safe, Efficient and Effective Care

St. Mary’s Hospital is one of just nine hospitals in the country to be recognized for its efforts in reducing mortality, readmissions and costs, while improving the overall patient experience.

 St. Mary’s is a finalist of the QUEST Award for High-value Healthcare from Premier, a hospital-owned performance improvement alliance of 2,600 hospitals and 84,000 other care sites.

St. Mary’s was honored during Premier’s annual Breakthroughs Conference and Exhibition in Nashville, Tennessee, last night for achieving top performance in four areas measured in Premier’s national QUEST® collaborative. The hospital reached top performance thresholds over the first three quarters of the 2011 calendar year based on the below measures of:

• Mortality: Eliminated 89 avoidable hospital deaths with a mortality rate of 1.18%.
• Cost of care: Safely lowered costs by an average of $250 per patient.
• Patient experience: Increased patient satisfaction scores by 0.4 percent.
• Readmissions: Reduced readmissions by 2.06 percent.

“St. Mary’s staff put a lot of time and effort into continuous quality improvement,” said Dr. Frank Byrne, President of St. Mary’s Hospital. “We want to make sure we deliver the highest quality care to our patients in the safest way possible while being good stewards of our resources. Being a finalist for this award means we’re on the right track and this will continue to be our focus.”

“St. Mary’s is being recognized for their continuous efforts to truly deliver better care,” said Premier President and CEO Susan DeVore. “They have volunteered to transparently share data and define a common framework with consistent measures – something that has never existed in healthcare. QUEST hospitals are charting the course to transforming healthcare’s future by increasing quality and patient safety, all while eliminating unnecessary costs.”

QUEST members participating since 2011 (303 of today’s 350 participants) were eligible for the award. QUEST hospitals agree to:

• Transparently share progress on a set of uniform measures on a regular basis;
• Share best practices and successful innovations with all members of the collaborative; and
• Take part in structured collaborative execution activities (such as 90-day improvement sprints).

Top performance thresholds were established at the top quartile of performance from a baseline period in all measures except cost of care, which was based on the median of the total inpatient cost per case mix adjusted discharge. Top performance methodology for each dimension varied depending on the unique measure calculation and methodology.

The Premier healthcare alliance and our nation’s leading hospitals created the QUEST collaborative. QUEST hospitals monitor and measure performance to ensure delivery of high-quality, cost-effective care. In their first three years, 157 QUEST hospitals saved nearly 25,000 lives and $4.5 billion.

QUEST’s now nearly 350 hospitals across 40 states continue to increase adherence to evidence-based care delivery, improve the patient experience and avoid harm while reducing mortality, cost of care and readmissions.

About the Premier healthcare alliance, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient

Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,600 U.S. hospitals and 84,000-plus other healthcare sites using the power of collaboration to lead the transformation to high quality, cost-effective care. Owned by hospitals, health systems and other providers, Premier maintains the nation’s most comprehensive repository of clinical, financial and outcomes information and operates a leading healthcare purchasing network. A world leader in helping deliver measurable improvements in care, Premier has worked with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service North West to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Premier also has an office in Washington. http://www.premierinc.com. Stay connected with Premier on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.