AUSTIN, Texas—St. David’s Medical Center—including Heart Hospital of Austin and St. David’s Georgetown Hospital—was recently named to the Fortune/Merative 100 Top Hospitals® list as the top performing Large Community Hospital in the U.S. The annual list—which was published by Fortune—recognizes excellence in clinical outcomes, operational efficiency, patient experience, and financial health.
“This is a significant achievement that starts with the commitment of our staff to the patients they care for,” Todd Steward, chief executive officer of St. David’s Medical Center, said. “In making this announcement, Merative researchers noted that top-ranked hospitals tend to have several key characteristics, including a mature culture (and a commitment to maintaining it), nursing excellence, deeply committed leadership, quality-focused hospital boards, an embrace of data and innovative technology (used in a practical manner), and local autonomy within health systems.”
Merative, a data, analytics and technology partner for the health industry, identified the top hospitals from a rigorous evaluation of 2,650 short-term, acute care, non-federal hospitals in the U.S. Formerly known as IBM Watson Health, Merative established the list to help identify best practices that may help other healthcare organizations achieve consistent, balanced, and sustainable high performance.
According to Merative, as compared to similar hospitals, the hospitals included on the Fortune/Merative 100 Top Hospitals list had better results on key clinical and operational performance indicators. These include survival rates, patient complications, healthcare associated infections, 30-day mortality and 30-day hospital-wide readmission rates, length of stay, throughput in emergency departments, inpatient expenses, profitability and ratings from patients.
The Fortune/Merative 100 Top Hospitals list also incorporates a community health measure into its ranking process. For the community health measure, hospitals were surveyed across three components: 1) assessing hospital contributions to community health as a provider of critical services for community health and preventive care; 2) identifying ways that hospitals contribute to community health as a community partner teaming up with local organizations to implement critical programs; and 3) focusing on ways that hospitals promote community health through their practices as anchor institutions supporting local economic and social progress. The community health measure is weighted equally with other ranking measures.
This is the 13th year that St. David’s Medical Center has been recognized as one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals, and it is the first time the facility has been named the No. 1 Large Community Hospital in the U.S.
For more information, visit the 100TopHospitals website.