Press Date: 08/13/2009

OhioHealth Named One of the Nation's Top 10 Health Systems by Thomson Reuters

Columbus, OH - OhioHealth has been named one of the nation's top 10 health systems for clinical performance. To identify the top 10, clinical quality and efficiency data from 252 health systems were analyzed by Thomson Reuters, a leading provider of information and solutions to improve the cost and quality of healthcare.

If all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as Medicare patients treated in the top 10 health systems:

§     More than 47,000 additional patients would survive each year.
§     Nearly 92,000 patient complications would be avoided annually.
§     The average patient stay would decrease by more than half a day.

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

"This ranking gets at the heart of what we do because it focuses on the ability of OhioHealth's hospitals to deliver real value to our community through efficient, high quality health care," said Bruce Vanderhoff, MD, senior vice president and chief medical officer for OhioHealth. "It makes a powerful statement about the numerous initiatives we have in place to improve medical outcomes and patient safety."

Some of those initiatives include: eICU, a technology that allows our ICU physicians and nurses to keep an even closer eye on patients and respond preemptively to the slightest changes in their condition; medication barcoding to ensure patients are receiving the correct medications and dosages; a partnership with other central Ohio hospitals to share best practices; and ongoing education requirements for all clinical staff.

The Thomson Reuters study assessed all U.S. health systems with two or more short-term, general, non-federal hospitals. Researchers looked at five metrics that gauge clinical quality and efficiency: mortality, medical complications, patient safety, average length of stay and adherence to clinical standards of care (evidence-based core measures published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services).

"These health systems set the standard for the industry, outperforming their peers by a wide margin," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs at Thomson Reuters. "They provided better care, saved more lives, had fewer medical complications and made fewer patient safety errors - even though they treat sicker patients, on average."

The top health systems were announced in the August 10 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.

OhioHealth
OhioHealth is a nationally-recognized, not-for-profit charitable, healthcare organization serving and supported by the community that was named by FORTUNE Magazine as one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For" in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Based in Columbus, Ohio, OhioHealth is a family of 17 hospitals, 20 health and surgery centers, home-health providers, medical equipment and health service suppliers throughout a 40-county area. OhioHealth hospitals in central Ohio are Riverside Methodist Hospital, Grant Medical Center, Doctors Hospital, Grady Memorial Hospital and Dublin Methodist Hospital. For more information, please visit our newly revised web site at www.OhioHealth.com.
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