News
Colorado Plains Medical Center Receives National Performance Award
Representatives from Solucient® and Modern Healthcare magazine recently announced that Colorado Plains Medical Center has been selected as one of Solicients 100 Top Hospitals Performance Improvement Leaders® award recipients for 2005.
“It is quite an honor to be recognized by an unbiased health industry company. We have a tremendous staff who works extremely hard every day, not desiring recognition or accolades. These folks truly care about the people, the quality, and the care they deliver and have a strong personal sense of responsibility,” states Michael Anaya, Sr., Chief Executive Officer.
Solucients 100 Top Hospitals®: Performance Improvement Leaders study is designed to identify hospital leaders who have instilled a true culture of performance improvement across their organization during five consecutive years (1999-2004). Performance Improvement Leaders (PI Leaders), as shown by objective statistical national comparisons, have led their organizations to improve hospital-wide performance consistently, year-over-year, at a substantially faster rate than peers across the United States in areas of clinical outcomes, patient safety, efficiency, financial stability and growth.
The study found that CPMC and PI Leaders made the following gains between 2000 and 2004:
They have fewer than expected complications, deaths and adverse safety events despite starting five years ago with higher than expected incidence.
They improved financial stability going from being barely profitable to achieving a healthy positive profit margin of 5.8%
They discharge patients two-thirds of a day earlier than five years ago.
They increased expenses by only 8%, while their peers’ expenses increased 20%.
They grew their patient volume 5.3 percent, while their peers lost 1.5 percent of their patient volume.
“These top 100 hospitals react quicker to challenges than their peers, and they focus on all aspects of care, not just one,” says Jean Chenoweth, Solucient’s senior vice president of performance improvement and the 100 Top Hospitals program. These hospitals are strong organizations that can perform across all areas: quality, safety, financial, efficiency and growth,” Chenoweth says. “The study measures organization-wide performance that touches every employee.”
The Solucient 100 Top Hospitals: Performance Improvement Leaders® study analyzes acute care hospitals nationwide that are represented across five hospital classes: major teaching; teaching; large community hospitals with 250+ beds; medium community hospitals with 100 to 249 beds; and small community hospitals with 25 to 99 beds.
CPMC was one of 20 small community facilities in the nation that received the honor last week and, along with Penrose – St. Francis Health Services in Colorado Springs (one of the designated large community hospitals), shared the spotlight as the only Colorado hospitals recognized in the award program.
“This tells the community that CPMC has enormously improved the value of what we provide to area residents through more efficient care, greater patient safety, and being able to invest in new and better services that position us to meet future challenges in healthcare.”
Anaya maintains that there wasn’t one single thing that accomplished the improvements at the hospital. “It was the desire of our employees to make positive differences in our patients’ lives every day”, he states.
Because CPMC is a JCAHO certified facility, patient safety and quality of care have always been major areas of focus for the facility.
The hospital employs a full-time nurse, Sonya Bass, who oversees this area of responsibility at CPMC, and uses a team approach towards total patient centered quality initiatives.
In addition, the staff meets daily to discuss matters related to length of stay for patients and employing the use of outpatient services, such as home health to help contain medical costs.
As the only designated Level III Trauma Center in Northeast Colorado, CPMC is the recipient of more acute cases and has the up-to-date technology, 24/7 physician specialist coverage and staff competencies to better handle adverse conditions and patient complications points out Anaya.
The hospital is planning on celebrating their achievement in several ways during the year, with some special activities that will involve the community.
“This is the first time CPMC has made the list and we want to share and celebrate our accomplishment with our community,” notes Anaya.
Solucient® is a healthcare information company based in Evanston, Illinois. They analyze more than 3,000 acute-care hospitals using Medicare cost reports, MedPAR data, and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) outpatient data. Hospitals are ranked within their respective comparison groups on the basis of their performance on nine measures relative to other hospitals in their group. The Performance Improvement Leaders Award was introduced in 2004 as a means to nationally measure the hospital industry’s capacity to consistently improve across a significant time. Solucient® has been identifying the country’s top-performing hospitals through various studies and benchmarking programs since 1993.
A feature article on Solucient’s award winners can be read in the May 1, 2006 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine. For more information, contact Sandy Engle, CPMC’s Director of Marketing and Business Development at 542-3346.