The University of Utah announced Friday that its health-care system has won a national award for quality for an eighth consecutive year.
The U. system was named a winner of the 2017 Vizient Bernard A. Birnbaum, MD, Quality Leadership Award at a summit held Thursday night in Denver, officials said.
The award recognizes academic medical centers for superior quality and safety performance, as measured by annual studies that Texas-based Vizient, a national health-care performance company, has conducted since 2005.
“The dedicated efforts of our faculty and staff have ensured that residents of the Mountain West have access to some of the best care in the country across our hospitals and clinics,“ A. Lorris Betz, interim CEO of University of Utah Health, said in a statement. “These efforts have also ensured that our students are training in one of the highest-quality systems in the nation.“
With a yearly budget of nearly $3.3 billion and some 18,000 employees, U. Health is Utah’s only university health system, serving patients across Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and much of Nevada. It was one of nearly 107 academic medical centers and 161 community hospitals included in this year in Vizient’s study, designed to measure safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, equity and patient centeredness.
Gordon Crabtree, CEO of University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics, said in a statement that the award was impressive because “the Vizient study is based on actual care delivery — not reputation.”
“It‘s an ‘apples to apples‘ comparison of academic medical centers, which care for the most complex and sickest patients in the country,“ Crabtree said.
Robert Pendleton, a physician and chief medical quality officer for U. Health, called the system’s eight-year stretch of winning Vizient’s award “an amazing achievement.”
“For U of U Health patients, the Vizient study means outstanding outcomes whether you‘re having a baby or undergoing heart surgery,” Pendleton said in a statement. “It also means U of U Health posts low mortality rates and that patients receive some of the safest care in the country. When discharged, they’re less likely to need to be readmitted.”
The 2017 Vizient Quality and Accountability Study ranked U. Health sixth among its top ten academic medical centers. Other winners include:
- 1. Mayo Clinic - Rochester, N.Y.
- 2. NYU Langone Health - New York City.<br>
- 3. Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin - Froedtert Hospital - Milwaukee, Wis.<br>
- 4. Rush University Medical Center - Chicago.<br>
- 5. Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center - Hershey, Pa.<br>
- 6. University of Utah Health - Salt Lake City.<br>
- 7. UC Health University of Colorado Hospital, Aurora, Colo.<br>
- 8. Lehigh Valley Health Network, Lehigh County, Pa.<br>
- 9. University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Texas.<br>
- 10. The University of Kansas Hospital - Kansas City, Kan.<br>
U. Health also placed fifth in a Vizient ranking for ambulatory care, the third year it has placed in that category’s top five. Betz said that award “recognizes demonstrated excellence in delivering high-quality, patient-centered, efficient and effective outpatient care.”