Area Hospitals Named In Top 100

BALTIMORE, MD — The Hospital of St Raphael in New Haven, Conn. has been selected as one of the top 100 hospitals in the United States in the annual National Benchmarks for Success study which measures clinical excellence and efficient delivery of health care services across the nation.

St Raphael was tapped in the category of major teaching hospital with more than 400 beds.

St Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport was named as one of three top teaching hospitals for a Northeast regional award.

The study was conducted by HICA, a comprehensive source of health information, a comprehensive source of health information, and The Health Network, a leading consumer health destination on television and the Internet.

Other Connecticut hospitals named in the top 100 included Hartford Hospital and St Francis Hospital in Hartford.

The acclamation marks the second time this year that St Vincent’s has received national recognition. In June, St Vincent’s was named to the HCIA Top 100 for its performance of angioplasty, a non-surgical procedure that clears clogged heart arteries.

Jean Chenoweth, HCIA senior vice president, said the most recent study was conducted to identify hospitals that have demonstrated benchmark performance during the year. The study found that although faced with sicker patients, 100 Top Hospitals have better outcomes. Their quality of care was as much as 17 percent better than that of the rest of the country.

“Benchmark hospitals have 14 percent fewer patient deaths, 12 percent shorter lengths of stays, 12 percent higher occupancy than their peers,” Mr Chenoweth said. “If all the US hospitals operated as efficiently as the top 100, industry saving would exceed $31 billion annually.”

Mr Chenoweth said Top 100 hospitals consistently performed well across eight measures indicating high value, high quality, effective use of resources, and efficient provision of care.

William J. Riordan, president and CEO of St Vincent’s, said the HCIA ratings speak to the growing interest on the part of the patients and insurers to measure quality of both clinical outcomes and hospital efficiency, particularly in light of recent media concern over the quality of care in hospitals.

“The bottom line is that we’re treating sicker patients and achieving better outcomes at a lower cost because we have made quality a priority,” Mr Riordan said.

J. Tod Fetherling, senior vice president of the Health Network, said that during an era in which many patients are paying out of pocket for care, consumers want hospitals that achieve high results and are cost-effective.

“With the explosion of available health news and information on television and the Internet, consumers are taking greater control of their personal health and expenses,” he said.

HCIA is a health care information and data management company headquartered in Baltimore. Its Top 100 list is compiled by analyzing the data of more than 3,200 hospitals that receive Medicare payments. The Health Network is operated by Fox Networks. The full study results are available at www.TheHealthNetwork.com.