Island Hospital honored as national "100 Top Hospitals" for performance improvement

Island Hospital was recently named one of the nation's top performance-improvement leader hospitals by Evanston, IL-based Solucient, a national health-care information corporation.

Island was recognized for being one of 100 hospitals displaying the greatest progress in improving hospital-wide performance over five years (2000-04). Top 100 organizations have shown consistent improvement in clinical outcomes, safety, hospital efficiency, financial stability and growth. Findings from the third edition of Solucient's 100 Top Hospitals: Performance Improvement Leaders study appear in the May 1, 2006 issue of Modern Healthcare magazine.

"We are elated to receive this recognition from a highly respected firm such as Solucient," said Island Hospital CEO Vince Oliver. "This study takes into consideration our entire organization, not just our wonderful nursing and medical staffs, but our ancillary services and support departments as well. It is a reaffirmation of our selected strategic direction and high praise for our diligent board of commissioners as well."

Island Hospital in Anacortes is a 43-bed, tax-supported, medical-surgical facility that serves Fidalgo Island, north Whidbey Island, San Juan County and western Skagit County.

The study, upon which the 100 top hospitals were selected, recognized hospitals with:

·   Fewer than expected complications, deaths and adverse safety events.

·   Improvement in financial stability, going from being barely profitable to achieving a healthy profit margin.

·   Patients discharged two-thirds of a day earlier than five years ago.

·   Increased expenses by 8% or less, while peers' expenses increased 20%.

·   Increased patient volume.

Solucient's 100 Top Hospitals study analyzed acute-care hospitals nationwide using detailed empirical-performance data from years 2000-04, including publicly available Medicare data, Medicare cost reports and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) outpatient data. Facilities recognized are represented across five classes: major teaching, teaching, large community, medium community and small community. Island Hospital falls within the small community category, which represents those hospitals with 25-99 beds. Along with Island, 19 other small community hospitals were honored.

The study looked at all U.S. hospitals licensed to treat Medicare patients. In all, nine performance measures were examined at each hospital: risk-adjusted mortality and complications, average length of stay, expenses, profitability, cash-to-debt ratio, growth in patient volume, tangible assets and risk-adjusted patient-safety index.

For more information on this study, visit www.100tophospitals.com.