Joint Commission Names 97 Calif. Hospitals as ‘Top Performers’
On Thursday, the Joint Commission recognized 1,224 hospitals across the U.S. on its "Top Performer" list for their adherence to evidence-based clinical processes, Modern Healthcare reports. The new report recognizes 11% more hospitals than last year's list.
Details of Report
For its report, the Joint Commission assessed the performance of accredited hospitals on 46 accountability measures of evidence-based care processes.
"Top Performer" designations were awarded based on the accountability measures for:
- Children's asthma care;
- Heart attack;
- Heart failure;
- Immunization;
- Inpatient psychiatric services;
- Perinatal care;
- Pneumonia;
- Stroke care;
- Surgical care; and
- Venous thromboembolism (VTE) care (Rice, Modern Healthcare, 11/13).
Hospitals were required to select and report on six measure sets in 2013.
To earn "Top Performer" status, a hospital must:
- Meet or exceed 95% performance on a composite score for all reported accountability measures;
- Meet or exceed 95% performance on each and every reported accountability measure where there are at least 30 denominator cases; and
- Have at least one core measure set with a composite rate of at least 95% and where all applicable individual accountability measures have a performance rate of at least 95% (Infection Control Today, 11/13).
National Findings
Overall, roughly 37% of the 3,300 Joint Commission-accredited hospitals that submitted quality data for 2013 were named to the list. The honorees include 138 government-owned facility and 35 academic medical centers (Modern Healthcare, 11/13).
In addition, about 718 Joint Commission-accredited hospitals were just one measure short of qualifying as a top performer (Joint Commission release, 11/13).
California Findings
Ninety-seven California hospitals were named "Top Performer[s]" in at least one key quality measure, up from 93 in 2012 and 34 in 2010.
Of the 97 hospitals, 86 were recognized for more than one category.
The John Muir Medical Center's Concord campus and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals in South San Francisco and Sacramento were named top performers in five of 10 measures -- the most out of all California hospitals. Specifically, both Kaiser facilities were recognized for stroke care, while John Muir was recognized for VTE care. All three hospitals were recognized for:
- Heart attack;
- Heart failure;
- Pneumonia; and
- Surgical care (Joint Commission report, 11/13).