Contact: Susan Brandt, 434.200.4731
Centra has been named as one of the Safest Hospitals in America by Forbes magazine.
Centra is recognized as one of the top hospitals in the country in the current issue of the magazine, which is online here. Centra was designated as a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence, and has low complication and mortality rates that rank the health care system in the top 5 percent of the country.
“We are excited to be named one of the safest hospitals in America,” said George W. Dawson, Centra president and CEO. “Safety and quality are major focuses at Centra, and we are honored to be recognized as a national leader.”
Achieving clinical excellence is a continuous process at Centra, and the healthcare system is in the midst of working with a national firm, Healthcare Performance Improvement, in an ongoing comprehensive patient safety program.
Forbes editors used data collected by private hospital rating company HealthGrades in its seventh annual study of quality and clinical excellence. HealthGrades has identified 270 hospitals out of 5,000 that collectively had a 28 percent lower mortality rate and 8 percent lower complication rate than the national average. The list which names Centra reflects the top 5 percent of hospitals nationwide, according to Forbes.
"What's very impressive is that when you look at statistics at high-performing hospitals," says co-author Dr. Rick May, it's clear that "they don't get [the HealthGrades distinction] by chance. They do it by being extremely focused."
Access to hospitals with such positive outcomes could be life-saving. If all facilities performed at this level, write May and his co-author Dr. Samantha Collier, 152,600 lives might have been saved and 11,700 hospital complications might have been prevented between 2005 and 2007, the years for which the data was used.
Improved safety rates clearly benefit patients, but they may also benefit the bottom line, Forbes reported. Though the company did not make a link between lower complication and mortality rates and lower premiums for medical malpractice insurance, improved safety rates may persuade underwriters to view the hospital as low-risk. They may also decrease the number of medical malpractice claims, which cost insurers $7.1 billion in 2007, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
Though many nonprofit organizations and companies offer information on hospital outcomes, HealthGrades is one of the only private companies to designate top performers. It does so by collecting an astounding amount of data on patient stays, Forbes reports.
For this study, it used administrative coding from more than 41 million Medicare patient records. The authors evaluated 26 common inpatient procedures and diagnoses and were able to determine outcomes in each case. The results are controlled for increased risk among populations with respect to factors like age, gender and sicker patients.
