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March 18, 2008

Providence Everett Medical Center Named One of the Nation's 100 Top Hospitals by Thomson Healthcare

Everett, WA--Providence Everett Medical Center was this week named one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals® by Thomson Healthcare, a leading provider of quality healthcare information. The 2007 Thomson 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success study appears in the March 17 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.

The 100 Top Hospital award recognizes hospitals that have achieved excellence in clinical outcomes, patient safety, financial performance, and efficiency. This is the fourth year that Providence Everett Medical Center has been recognized with this honor, and it is the only hospital in Washington state to be named to this prestigious list for 2007.

“The study analyzed data from 3,018 hospitals and being named in the top 100 puts us in the top three percent of hospitals nationwide. This announcement is on the heels of being named in February as a Distinguished Hospital by the Healthgrades organization, another leading healthcare rating company,” says Dave Brooks, CEO, Providence Everett. “These national awards put Providence Everett into a very elite group of hospitals recognized for their outstanding high quality care and best clinical outcomes. This is good news for the patients who choose Providence Everett for their care. These awards are also a tribute to our staff whose clinical expertise is at the very core of being named among the best hospitals in the nation.”

According to the study, the highest performance levels in patient safety were achieved by the 100 hospitals in the study that delivered the highest balanced performance across quality, efficiency, and financial stability. If all hospitals had performed at the level of these leading hospitals on the eight patient safety measures studied, they would have saved $253 million and 7,914 lives during the time period the study examined.

“Employers, health plans, and hospitals need to take note that we have entered a new phase in driving transformation of the healthcare industry,” said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president in the Center for Healthcare Improvement at Thomson Healthcare. “Hospitals setting new levels of patient safety are those with the highest balanced scores across quality, efficiency, and financial performance.”

The 15th edition of the Thomson 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success study uses a balanced scorecard approach and scores hospitals according to eight key organization-wide measures: risk-adjusted mortality, risk-adjusted complications, patient safety composite, average core measures scores, severity-adjusted average length of stay, expense per adjusted discharge, profit from operations, and cash-to-debt ratio.

More information on this study and other 100 Top Hospitals research is available at www.100tophospitals.com. Copies of the 100 Top Hospitals report can be purchased by calling Thomson Healthcare at (800) 568-3282 or logging on to www.100tophospitals.com.