Spectrum Health United Hospital Named One of the Nation’s 100 Top Hospitals by Truven Health Analytics

Spectrum Health United Hospital was named one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals® by Truven Health Analytics formerly the healthcare business of Thomson Reuters. Truven Health Analytics is a leading provider of information and solutions to improve the cost and quality of healthcare.

The Truven Health 100 Top Hospitals® study evaluates performance in 10 areas: mortality; medical complications; patient safety; average patient stay; expenses; profitability; patient satisfaction; adherence to clinical standards of care; post-discharge mortality; and readmission rates for acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), heart failure, and pneumonia. The study is celebrating its 20th year, and has been conducted annually since 1993. This is the sixth time United Hospital has been recognized with this honor.

“We are honored to be recognized as a Top 100 Hospital for our commitment to excellent quality, safety and patient satisfaction.” said Tina Freese-Decker, President, Spectrum Health United Hospital.

“This award is the result of the dedication and teamwork of our medical staff and employees. Their commitment to excellence, compassion, and exceptional care is evident in every patient interaction.”

To conduct the 100 Top Hospitals study, Truven Health researchers evaluated 2,922 short-term, acute care, non-federal hospitals. They used public information — Medicare cost reports, Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) data, and core measures and patient satisfaction data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Compare website. Hospitals do not apply, and winners do not pay to market this honor. Critical access hospitals, such as Spectrum Health Kelsey Hospital, are not eligible to receive this award.

The winning hospitals were announced in the February 25 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.

“The winners of the 100 Top Hospitals award have driven the national benchmarks higher every year for 20 years. This year’s winners have brought even higher value to their local communities – better quality, higher efficiency and high patient perceptions of care, while confronting the challenges of massive industry-wide transformation to implement healthcare reform,“ said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president at Truven Health Analytics. “The key to success in a tumultuous environment is visionary leadership that develops and maintains a hospital-wide culture of excellence that cuts across everything, from patient care to housekeeping to administration, and the refusal to rest on laurels when it comes to adopting new technologies and techniques. I congratulate this year’s winners for their persistent drive for excellence.”

If all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as those treated in the award-winning facilities:

More than 164,000 additional lives could be saved.
Approximately 82,000 additional patients could be complication free.
$6 billion could be saved.
The average patient stay would decrease by nearly half a day.

If the same standards were applied to all inpatients, the impact would be even greater.

More information on this study and other 100 Top Hospitals research is available at www.100tophospitals.com.

Spectrum Health is a not-for-profit health system in West Michigan offering a full continuum of care through the Spectrum Health Hospital Group, which is comprised of nine hospitals including Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, a state of the art children’s hospital that opened in January 2011, and 140 service sites; the Spectrum Health Medical Group and West Michigan Heart, physician groups totaling more than 700 providers; and Priority Health, a health plan with 600,000 members. Spectrum Health is West Michigan’s largest employer with 19,000 employees. The organization provided $204 million in community benefit during its 2012 fiscal year.