May 9, 2005

Study: Mercy Medical Center Among Nation’s Best in Patient Safety

Hospital Receives the HealthGrades
Distinguished Hospital Award for Excellence in Patient Safety™

Mercy Medical Center’s patient safety record is among the best in the nation, according to a new study issued by HealthGrades, an organization that evaluates hospital quality for consumers, corporations, hospitals and health plans.

The study of 37 million patient records from 4,200 hospitals over the years 2001, 2002 and 2003 also identifies Mercy Medical Center—Sioux City as a recipient of the HealthGrades Distinguished Hospital Award for Excellence in Patient Safety™.

This is the second year in a row that Mercy has received the prestigious national honor, which ranks the regional medical center in the top 3% of the nation’s hospitals for overall patient safety.
The second annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study independently analyzes the performance of nearly every hospital in the country according to 13 patient safety indicators (PSIs) developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The AHRQ indicators were developed specifically to help hospitals assess how well they perform in the area of patient safety.

“The difference between the best-performing hospitals and others seems to be the creation of a ‘culture of safety,’ requiring rapid identification of errors and root causes and the successful implementation of improvement strategies. That can only be achieved with strong leadership, critical thinking, and commitment to excellence,” said HealthGrades Vice President of Medical Affairs Samantha Collier, M.D., who authored the study. “For patients, it’s important to know which hospitals meet this standard, as they are 50% less likely to have an incident at Distinguished Hospitals, according to the study.”

Distinguished Hospitals generally had lower incident rates across all PSIs in 2001, and also generally improved at a greater rate than the other hospitals. Overall, from 2001 through 2003, the Distinguished Hospitals as a group had 267,151 fewer patient safety incidents and 48,417 fewer deaths resulting in a lower cost of $2.3 billion associated with Medicare beneficiaries as compared to the bottom 10 percent of all hospitals studied.

“We are honored to receive the Distinguished Hospital Award for Patient Safety for the second consecutive year,” said Peter Makowski, president and CEO of Mercy. “Safeguarding and enhancing patient safety is an all-encompassing process for us – from the board to our physician partners and nurses. For that reason, we are very pleased to be recognized for our collective efforts.”

“At the same time, the regional community – which it is our mission and privilege to serve – may again be reassured that some of the best medical care in the nation is available right here at Mercy,” Makowski added.

In determining the Distinguished Hospital Award for Patient Safety recipients, HealthGrades used the following AHRQ patient safety indicators:

• Death in low-mortality diagnosis related groups (DRGs)
• Decubitus ulcer
• Failure to rescue
• Foreign body left in during procedure
• Iatrogenic pneumothorax (operative induced dropped lung)
• Infections due to medical care
• Postoperative hemorrhage or hematoma
• Postoperative hip fracture
• Postoperative physiologic and metabolic derangements (delirium)
• Postoperative pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis
• Postoperative respiratory failure
• Postoperative sepsis
• Postoperative wound dehiscence (deterioration of stitched wound)

Details of HealthGrades methodology and a copy of the complete study are available at www.healthgrades.com.

Mercy’s second national award for patient safety is just the latest in a long list of accolades and honors for the hospital.

In March, Mercy was recognized for service excellence under the J.D. Power and Associates Distinguished Hospital Program.SM Mercy was the first hospital in Iowa, and among an elite group of just 29 hospitals in the nation to earn the honor.

During the last three years, Mercy has been recognized with several other national awards for quality of care.