SALT LAKE CITY —University of Utah ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ has been once again named a winner of the prestigious 2018 Vizient Bernard A. Birnbaum, MD, Quality Leadership Award.
The award recognizes academic medical centers for demonstrating superior quality and safety performance as measured by the Vizient Quality and Accountability Study, which has been conducted annually since 2005. The award was presented on Thursday, October 4th at the 2018 Vizient Fall Connections Summit held in Las Vegas.
This year, hundreds of academic medical centers and community hospitals were included in the study, which measures superior performance based on the Institute of Medicine's six domains of care: safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, equity and patient centeredness.
"Thanks to the expertise, hard work, compassion and dedication of our University of Utah ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ faculty and staff, residents in the Mountain West have access to some of the highest-quality care in the entire nation," said Michael L. Good, MD, CEO of University of Utah ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½. "And, these efforts ensure future citizens will have access to the even higher levels of care—as our students train in a top-tier health system, not just in Utah, but among the premier academic health science centers across the United States of America"
"Our inclusion in Vizient's top ten rankings is further proof of the excellent work being done by our healthcare team for the people of the Mountain West," said Gordon Crabtree, CEO of University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics. "It is also a perfect compliment to our selection as the top hospital in Utah by U.S. News & World Report and our recognition from Forbes as one of America's BEST Large Employers."
The 2018 Vizient Quality and Accountability Study Rankings place U of U ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ in the company of the nation's top academic medical centers:
- Mayo Clinic – Rochester
- Rush University Medical Center
- NYU Langone Medical Center
- University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
- The University of Kansas ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ System
- University of Pennsylvania ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ System
- University of Utah ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½
- Houston Methodist Hospital
- Memorial Hermann – Texas Medical Center
- Tufts Medical Center
In addition to the placement on the top ten list, U of U ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ was also ranked 5th in the Ambulatory Care Quality and Accountability Awards from Vizient. This is the fourth year in a row the U has been ranked in the top ten.
This award recognizes excellence in delivering high-quality outpatient care in five ways: access to care, capacity management and throughput, quality and efficiency, continuum of care, and equity. Those recognizes as top performers are seen as having adopted world class practices and solutions to optimize the patient experience.
"What is most important at U of U ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ is what these rankings mean for our patients," said Good. "Better care, better access, better communication with patients and their families, better survival, shorter stays and fewer complications. This is what quality care is all about. "
Vizient, Inc. is the largest member-driven health care performance company in the U.S. In previous years, the Vizient Excellence Awards were known as the University ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½System Consortium Awards.
The composite scoring system uses patient-level performance data from a variety of sources, including the Vizient Clinical Data Base, the Vizient Core Measures Data Base, the Hospital Consumer Assessment of ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½care Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½care Safety Network.
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University of Utah ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ is the state's only academic health care system, providing leading-edge and compassionate medicine for a referral area that encompasses 10% of the U.S., including Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and much of Nevada. A hub for health sciences research and education in the region, U of U ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ touts a $356 million research enterprise and trains the majority of Utah's physicians and more than 1,250 health care providers each year at its Schools of Medicine and Dentistry and Colleges of Nursing, Pharmacy and ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½. With more than 20,000 employees, the system includes 12 community clinics and four hospitals — University Hospital; University Neuropsychiatric Institute; Huntsman Cancer Hospital; and the University Orthopaedic Center. For eight straight years, U of U ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ has ranked among the top 10 U.S. academic medical centers in the rigorous Vizient Quality and Accountability Study, including reaching No. 1 in 2010 and 2016.