Citizens Ranked One of 100 Top Hospitals
By Gabe Semenza, Victoria Advocate, Texas
Mar. 29–Citizens Medical Center is ranked one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals. It’s designated as such by Solucient, a company that for 14 years has rated U.S. “benchmark” hospitals in an effort to guide the industry toward reaching for the highest standards and to recognize those that they deem get there, it says.
“If you use the Oscars as an example, instead of best actress or best director, the hospital would have won this for best picture,” said Jean Chenoweth, Solucient’s senior vice president for performance improvement, Wednesday. “What we’re talking about is the whole hospital, not the star doctor, the star nurse. The whole hospital pulled together.”
This is the first time Citizens has been on this list, which changes every year and features four other Texas hospitals. Citizens is in the “large community hospital” category — one of five categories — with 19 other awardees, including a Tyler hospital.
“I think it validates our efforts to improve the quality of care and patient safety,” said Cherie Brzozowski, Citizens’ director of quality management. “They keep raising the bar and we keep making improvements.”
Chenoweth, in a telephone conversation from Michigan, said the top hospitals are selected based on quality, finances, operations and growth. To be fair, the company analyzed public data — using what Chenoweth called “published methodologies” — of nearly 3,000 U.S. hospitals.
About 40 percent of the study to determine the nation’s best was geared at clinical quality, she said: patient outcomes and treatment. For a hospital to win the national award, it must rank at or above the top 90 percent when compared to peer hospitals of similar size.
“What this means is that the typical 100 Top Hospitals award winner produces solid patient outcomes, has good patient safety, and provides efficient care at a reasonable cost, compared with other hospitals like it across the country,” Solucient literature notes.
Solucient is a national health care information company that annually performs this study at its own expense. It is part of Thompson Healthcare, a provider of information and solutions — strategic and management plans, for example — to hospitals and others.
“Citizens Medical Center has never been a client of ours,” Chenoweth said, adding that hospitals don’t have to be clients of the company to be considered for the award and that the designation can’t be applied for or purchased. “The data comes out the way it comes out. Every hospital gets analyzed whether they like it or not.”
David Brown analyzed the significance of the honor. The Citizens CEO said, “This is a tremendous award.”
From his office, Brown said he’s proud of the hospital staff — that quality “happens at the bedside” — and that the hospital accomplished this feat by consistently focusing on quality.
“You make it a priority,” he said. “In so doing, we rose to the top.” Gabe Semenza is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact him at 361-580-6519. or gsemenza@vicad.com.
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