From St. Joseph’s Hospitals:

St. Joseph’s Hospitals today were named one of the nation’s Top Performers on Key Quality Measures by The Joint Commission, the leading accreditor of health care organizations in America.  St. Joseph’s Hospitals,  including St. Joseph’s main hospital as well as St. Joseph’s Women’s and St. Joseph’s Hospital-North, were recognized by The Joint Commission for exemplary performance in using evidence-based clinical processes that are shown to improve care for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care.

“Patients assume they will receive high quality care while they are in a hospital, but this can be hard for non-clinical people to assess,” said Isaac Mallah, chief executive officer. “I’m excited to announce this recognition because it is an outside healthcare expert confirming that we are taking the right steps to provide safe, effective care.”  

            According to The Joint Commission, hospitals like St. Joseph’s earn a spot on this list for attaining and sustaining excellence in accountability measure performance.  Top Performer on Key Quality Measures ratings are based on an aggregation of accountability measure data reported to The Joint Commission during the 2011 calendar year. The list of Top Performers represents 18 percent of accredited hospitals reporting data.   

Each of the hospitals that were named as a Top Performer on Key Quality Measures met two 95 percent (95/95) performance thresholds on 2011 accountability measure data. First, each hospital achieved performance of 95 percent or above on a single, composite score. Second, each hospital met or exceeded 95 percent performance on every accountability measure for which it reports data to The Joint Commission. A 95 percent score means a hospital provided an evidence-based practice 95 times out of 100 opportunities to provide the practice. Each accountability measure represents an evidence-based practice – for example, giving aspirin at arrival for heart attack patients and giving antibiotics one hour before surgery.

“When we raise the bar and provide the proper guidance and tools, hospitals have responded with excellent results,” says Mark R. Chassin, M.D., FACP, M.P.P., M.P.H., president, The Joint Commission. “This capacity for continual improvement points toward a future in which quality and safety defects are dramatically reduced and high reliability is sought and achieved with regularity. Such day-to-day progress will slowly but surely transform today’s health care system into one that achieves unprecedented performance outcomes for the benefit of the patients.”

In addition to being included in today’s release of The Joint Commission’s “Improving America’s Hospitals” annual report, St. Joseph’s Hospitals will be recognized on The Joint Commission’s Quality Check website (www.qualitycheck.org). The Top Performer program will be featured in the November issue of The Joint Commission Perspectives and the October issue of The Joint Commission: The Source.