Memorial Hermann Named One of the Nation’s Top 15 Health Systems by Truven Health Analytics
For the second consecutive year, Memorial Hermann was the lone Texas hospital cited for exceptional patient safety and quality performance when it was named this week as one of the nation’s top 15 health systems by Truven Health Analytics, a leading provider of information and solutions to improve the cost and quality of healthcare.
Researchers from the Truven Health Analytics 100 Top Hospitals® program analyzed the clinical quality and efficiency of more than 300 health systems to identify the top 15.
“This distinguished award confirms our journey to become a High Reliability Organization where zero patient harm is the only acceptable outcome,” said Dan Wolterman, President and CEO of Memorial Hermann Health System. “We have structured our culture around patient-centered, safe and quality care. I am very humbled by this recognition because it demonstrates to our staff that their incredible dedication to not doing any harm to our patients is paying off in national acknowledgement of their work.
“It bears noting that this award was based on objective public data – not reputation – meaning that our unrelenting focus on patient safety and quality differentiated Memorial Hermann from any system in the state, and placed us among the top five (of the top 15) healthcare systems in the nation.”
U.S. health systems with two or more short-term, general, non-federal hospitals; cardiac and orthopedic hospitals; and critical access hospitals were assessed in the study. Researchers looked at eight metrics that gauge clinical quality and efficiency: mortality rate, 30-day readmission rate, adherence to clinical standards of care (evidence-based core measures published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – CMS), and HCAHPS patient survey score (part of a national initiative sponsored by the United States Department of Health and Human Services to measure the quality of care in hospitals).
The study relied on public data from the 2010 and 2011 Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) data and the CMS Hospital Compare data sets.
Researchers from the Truven Health Analytics 100 Top Hospitals program have analyzed and reported on the performance of individual hospitals since 1993.
“As health systems move further into health care reform, consistency of hospital and physician outcomes in every community served is the holy grail,” said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals® program at Truven Health Analytics. “Health system leaders’ effectiveness will be measured not solely on the performance of the whole system compared to other systems, but also on the leader’s ability to align the performance of the provider segments of the health system to achieve consistency. This new study begins to measure the aspect of performance.”
Truven Health Analytics was formerly the Healthcare business of Thomson Reuters.
The Top 15 Health Systems recognition comes on the heels of the National Quality Forum (NQF) and The Joint Commission naming Memorial Hermann the 2012 recipient of the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award, considered the “Oscar” of healthcare safety and quality. Memorial Hermann is the first Texas hospital system ever recognized with the Eisenberg Award, and the only health system or hospital ever to be the recipient of both the NQF National Quality Healthcare Award (2009) and the Eisenberg Award at the National Level.
The Eisenberg Award honored Memorial Hermann and its affiliated physicians for their High Reliability Organization journey from Board to Bedside initiative – entailing a focus on providing compassionate, operationally and financially efficient care by hardwiring high-reliability behaviors, evidence-based care and harm prevention among leadership and employees system-wide.
