News Release

Southwest has been named one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals(r) for the sixth time. The ranking is part of The Solucient 100 Top Hospitals(r) National Benchmarks for Success award.

The award names hospitals that perform well across the board-achieving the highest national scores (benchmarks) on nine key performance measures for quality, patient safety, financial performance and growth in patient volume.

Alone at the top. Southwest is the only hospital in the Portland/Vancouver metropolitan area to receive the 100 Top Hospitals(r) honor this year. Southwest is also one of only 40 hospitals in the country to earn 100 Top Hospitals(r) status six times or more during the past 14 years. That puts Southwest among the top 1% of the more than 3,000 hospitals eligible for the ranking.

'I love this award because you can't buy your way into this exclusive club of high performing hospitals,' said Joseph Kortum, Southwest's CEO and President. 'It's an independent assessment of the outstanding team of professionals and volunteers working in concert to raise the bar on quality, safety, and patient satisfaction. When a health care institution is functioning at the top of its game, patients benefit through better outcomes, shorter stays, higher satisfaction, and more reasonable costs,' added Kortum.

Solucient, a national health care information company, performs the study annually at its own expense to share the new standards set by the hospital industry, enabling other hospitals to improve their own performance. Solucient uses only public Medicare data, so all hospitals can be measured and the most reliable standards reported. Only 100 hospitals, selected from five categories (major teaching, teaching, large, medium and small community hospitals) are named. Southwest is ranked among teaching hospitals because of its family practice residency program, Family Medicine of Southwest Washington.

Key measures of performance. The 14th edition of the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success study uses a balanced scorecard approach. It scores hospitals according to nine key organization-wide measures:

• risk-adjusted mortality
  
• risk-adjusted complications
  
• patient safety
  
• core quality measures
  
• growth in patient volumes
  
• average length of stay
  
• expense per adjusted discharge
  
• profit from operations
  
• cash to debt ratio

Southwest also outperformed its 100 Top Hospitals peer group in five of the 9 performance measures including: risk-adjusted complications, patient safety, severity-adjusted average length of stay, expense per adjusted discharge, cash to debt ratio, and growth in patient volumes. 'The balanced scorecard approach is important because it helps assess how the hospital coordinates care at all levels,' said Rainy Atkins, Southwest Chief Operating Officer.

Other key findings of the study include:

• If all hospitals performed like the benchmark hospitals, more than 100,000 additional patients could survive each year, and an additional 114,000 could avoid complications.
  
• With 25 percent higher admissions per bed, benchmark hospitals treated more patients than non-winning hospitals and also treated patients who were sicker and required more complex treatment.
  
• The 100 Top Hospitals spent an average of 12 percent less per discharge than peer hospitals.
  
• Median total profit margin at 100 Top Hospitals was nearly three times higher than peer hospitals.
  
• Salaries and benefits were $3,200 more a year per full-time staff member at benchmark hospitals.

Raising the Bar. The measures in the study change usually every year, based on new and higher standards of care. For example, the survival rate of hospitalized patients has risen every year for more than a decade, thus raising the standard for patient survival. To be recognized, a hospital must keep up with the new standards of performance and develop new techniques to achieve better performance.

What does a 100 Top Hospitals National award mean for consumers? Having a 100 Top Hospitals(r) National winner in the community means patients can trust the hospital is providing dependable, high quality care. Just as local sports teams are measured by performance, this award means that a local hospital has been measured against all of the hospitals just like it in the nation. A 100 Top Hospitals National winner ranks at or above the top 90 percent on hospital-wide performance when compared with its national peers.

How does Solucient get its data? This study focuses on short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of patients. The data come from public sources including the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) data set, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Standard Analytical File (SAF) outpatient data set, and the Medicare Cost Report.

What are the core quality measures? This year's award also includes a measurement associated with national treatment standards (core measures). These include a set of standard care practices that all heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia patients should receive. Hospitals are scored only on those core measures that it reports publicly. To learn more about the 100 Top Hospitals award, including lists of the most recent award winners and details on the measures used, visit www.100tophospitals.com.