This is the second consecutive year that Emory Healthcare has had two of its large teaching hospitals rank in the national top 10 UHC Quality Leadership Awards.
University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), a national organization comprising most of the nation's leading academic medical centers with a focus on quality and safety excellence, has ranked Emory University Hospital (which includes Emory University Orthopaedics & Spine Hospital) second and Emory University Hospital Midtown third in the 2013 national UHC Quality Leadership Awards.
This is the second consecutive year that Emory Healthcare has had two of its large teaching hospitals rank in the top 10 nationally. Last year, Emory University Hospital ranked 2nd and Emory University Hospital Midtown ranked 6th. Also, Emory Healthcare is again UHC's only health care organization where two hospitals from the same system have ranked in the top 10.
The announcement was made at the UHC Annual Conference in Atlanta on Thursday, Oct. 17.
The Quality Leadership Award honors top performers in UHC's Quality and Accountability Study, which ranks performance in the areas of:
- mortality,
- effectiveness,
- safety,
- equity,
- patient centeredness, and
- efficiency.
"Since 2006, Emory Healthcare has been on a journey to redefine the quality of care and service we provide to our patients," says John T. Fox, president and CEO of Emory Healthcare. "These national rankings are indicative of our leading improvements in mortality reduction, infection rate reduction, substantial elimination of ventilator-acquired pneumonia, and many other quality, safety and service indicators that go into this overall national ranking algorithm," says Fox.
Fox goes on to say, "Credit goes to the entire Emory Healthcare management and clinical leadership team and all of the 16,000 staff and physicians within Emory Healthcare who contributed to this strong performance for the patients we serve. This continues to be the ultimate team effort over many years."
Formed in 1984, UHC is an alliance of 118 academic medical centers and 299 of their affiliated hospitals representing a majority of the nation's academic medical centers.
"One of the highest forms of recognition for an academic medical center is to be deemed a national leader in quality among peer institutions," says William Bornstein, MD, PhD, chief quality officer and chief medical officer for Emory Healthcare. "We have been successful by instilling a culture of commitment of quality, safety and service across the entire organization, and because of this, we are able to perform more effectively for our patients and families."
Other 2013 UHC Quality Leadership Award top 10 winners include:
- (1) NYU Langone Medical Center, New York
- (4) Mayo Clinic – Rochester, MN
- (5) Rush University Medical Center, Illinois
- (6) Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, Michigan
- (7) Fletcher Allen Health Care, Vermont
- (8) The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Ohio
- (9) University of Utah Health Care, Utah
- (10) University of Colorado Hospital, Colorado
Academic medical centers typically treat America's sickest, most complex patient cases, and a disproportionate number of patients who are uninsured, underinsured, or indigent. Additionally, Emory's hospitals, like many of these institutions, are centers for cutting-edge scientific research and biomedical innovation and training, leading the way for tomorrow's treatments and cures.