LMH: Among Nation’s Top 100 Hospitals

| 2015 Q1 | story by JANICE EARLY    |

It’s official…again! For the third year in a row, Lawrence Memorial Hospital has earned its place among the nation’s top 100 hospitals. As a recipient of the 2015 Truven Health Analytics™ 100 Top Hospitals® award, LMH is proud to rank so highly among nearly 3,000 acute care hospitals nationwide. LMH is in the national top 20 for organizations its size, and it’s also the only hospital in Kansas to achieve this distinction for the past three consecutive years.

In an industry changing as rapidly as health care, according to Truven Health Analytics, the 100 Top Hospitals illustrate how effective leaders manage change and achieve excellence in a dynamic environment. The 2015 study recognizes hospitals that have clearly demonstrated the vision to develop long-term excellence in care, efficiency and community value. The program objectively gauges leadership impact and organizational health by assessing the ability to drive consistent, outstanding performance versus the performance of industry peers.

How the Truven Health study works
The 100 Top Hospitals designation is based on hospital-wide performance improvement over time. Using independent, quantitative research, the Truven Health 100 Top Hospitals study identifies hospitals and leadership teams that provide the highest level of value to their communities, based on a national balanced scorecard.

The scorecard measures overall organizational performance across 11 key analytic measures that encompass patient safety, quality of patient care, operational efficiency, financial stability and patient perception of care. Rather than conducting a one-year analysis – which only captures performance at a specific snapshot in time – the Truven Health study looks at data that reflect five-year performance for most measures.

The 11 measures are:
In-hospital mortality
Medical complications
Patient safety
Core measures mean percent (includes measures like performing angioplasty on heart attack patients within 90 minutes of arrival, providing the appropriate initial antibiotics to pneumonia patients, giving surgery patients the right antibiotic to prevent infection, and more)
Average length of patient stay
30-day readmission rate for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and hip/knee arthoplasty
30-day mortality rate for heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia
Expenses
Profitability
Medicare spend per beneficiary

Patient satisfaction (based on HCAHPS score, a patient rating system for overall hospital performance)Hospital-wide performance excellence at LMH this year, LMH received an overall composite score in the 93.5 percentile, which means it’s continuously improving – and improving at a faster rate than 93.5 percent of all medium-sized community hospitals in the U.S. The medium-sized community hospital category is the largest of the five categories in the 100 Top Hospitals Study, which makes it the most competitive: after being compared to roughly 1,000 similar hospitals, LMH once again emerged in the category’s top 20.

What does LMH’s recognition as a top 100 hospital mean for patients? Research shows that patients at Truven Health 100 Top Hospitals:
Have a lower mortality index considering patient severity
Have fewer patient complications
Avoid adverse patient safety events
Follow accepted care protocols
Have lower mortality and 30-day readmission rates
Keep expenses low
Send patients home sooner
Score better on patient satisfaction surveys

Truven Health research further reveals that, as a top 100 hospital:
LMH excels across the entire organization, from high quality patient care to financial management, community benefits and more.
It has very strong board leadership, and all hospital leaders at LMH are very effective with management and organizational goal development.
LMH follows care standards more closely than nearly 1,000 similarly sized hospitals and nearly 3,000 other hospitals throughout the U.S.
LMH values a culture of excellence and performance improvement throughout every aspect of its organization.
LMH builds on its achievements and continuously raises its own standards of excellence.
LMH uses advanced information technology processes.

This highly celebrated program is now in its 22nd year, and being named a Truven Health top hospital is a very prestigious achievement. As leadership at the Truven Health Center for Performance Improvement explains, the 100 Top Hospitals program is different from all other hospital ranking systems because its purpose is to show hospitals how and where they can improve, not to help consumers choose a hospital. Furthermore, it is completely objective: hospitals cannot apply for the 100 Top Hospitals award, and winners do not pay to market this honor.

At LMH, it has earned its position among the top U.S. hospitals through its culture of performance improvement, its outstanding leadership and staff who embody evidence-based management as well as evidence-based medicine, and its unwavering dedication to the health of the community. As the center of healthcare in this community – not to mention one of Lawrence’s largest employers – LMH knows financial health, operational efficiency and high quality patient care must be at the center of everything it does, and every decision it makes. Its focus going forward will be to continuously reset LMH’s performance targets for ongoing improvement throughout the hospital. From hospital leaders to physicians and other health care providers, staff and volunteers, LMH is proud to share this honor with the community for the third consecutive year.n