OGDEN — Two local hospitals have been recognized for leading the way as top performers, using evidence-based care with positive patient outcomes.
Ogden Regional Medical Center and Brigham City Community Hospital represent the top 18 percent of Joint Commission hospitals reporting core measure performance data for 2011.
The Top of Utah hospitals are among six in the state and 620 nationwide recognized for exemplary performance.
“This honor is recognition that Ogden Regional Medical Center has been vigilant in adhering to a set of care processes called core measures, which were developed by the Joint Commission,” said Elizabeth Later, the hospital’s chief nursing officer.
The core measures are derived from qualities defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“Core measures have been proven to reduce the risk of complications and prevent recurrences in patients who come to hospitals for treatment of illness or a condition,” Later said.
“The core measures and other quality indicators help hospitals improve patient care by focusing on the actual results.”
The Joint Commission is the nation’s predominant standards-setting and accrediting body for health care.
Its “top performers” on key quality measures recognize accredited hospitals that attain excellence on accountability and measure performance using data reported about evidence-based clinical processes that are shown to be the best treatments for certain conditions.
According to the Joint Commission, making the top performers list isn’t easy.
Each hospital got a performance of 95 percent or higher on every reported accountability measure, excluding any measures with fewer than 30 eligible cases or patients.
A score of 95 percent means the hospital provided evidence-based care in 95 out of 100 opportunities to do so.
Each area of practice includes several accountability measures. For instance, in the case of a heart attack, the hospital must provide evidence-based treatment such as giving aspirin at arrival and at discharge, performing angioplasty, and prescribing a beta-blocker at discharge.
All three measures, tracked for a two-year period, showed improvement.
Heart attack care improved from 88.6 percent in 2002 to 95.8 percent in 2011.
Pneumonia care rose to 96.2 percent in 2011, up from 72.4 percent in 2002, and surgical care results rose to 97.6 percent in 2011 from 82.1 percent in 2005.
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