St. Clair Hospital Receives Second Prestigious National Award In A Week

Latest Award Is 100 Top Hospitals®  Designation For 2019

Marks Fourth Time Since 2012

PITTSBURGH, Pa. (March 4, 2019) ― Hard on the heels of a 5-star quality rating from the Centers for

Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), St. Clair Hospital today was named one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals® for 2019. This marks the second consecutive year and fourth time since 2012 that St. Clair has won this prestigious honor.

The 100 Top Hospitals award is the culmination of an annual study by IBM Watson Health that identifies top performing hospitals in the country based on overall organizational performance. Formerly known as the Truven Health Analytics 100 Top Hospitals, this study spotlights the best-performing hospitals in the U.S. based on a balanced scorecard of publicly available clinical, operational, and patient satisfaction metrics and data. To conduct the 100 Top Hospitals study, IBM Watson Health researchers evaluated short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. Hospitals. Hospitals do not apply or pay for this honor, and all acute care hospitals in the United States are evaluated for potential inclusion. The study has been conducted annually since 1993.

The 100 Top Hospitals  showed the most significant outperformance versus non-winning peer group hospitals within clinical and operational performance benchmarks evaluated in the study.

“At a time when research shows that the U.S. spends nearly twice as much on health care as other high-income countries, yet has less effective population health outcomes, the 100 Top Hospitals are setting a different example by delivering consistently better care at a lower cost,” said Ekta Punwani, 100 Top Hospitals program leader at IBM Watson Health.

“This prestigious award affirms St. Clair Hospital’s commitment to providing world-class health care to our patients and is a reflection of how dedicated our board, medical staff, employees and volunteers are to serving the community,” said John T. Sullivan, M.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, St. Clair Hospital.

IBM Watson Health noted that if all Medicare patients received the same level of care as those treated at the 100 Top Hospitals:

• More than 103,000 additional lives could be saved in-hospital;
• More than 38,000 additional patients could be complication free;
• More than $8.2 billion in inpatient costs could be saved; and
• Approximately 155,000 fewer discharged patients would be readmitted within 30 days.

If the same standards were applied to all in-patients, not just Medicare patients, the impact would be even greater.

Today’s announcement continues a period in which St. Clair Hospital has garnered multiple national recognitions, including:

• Awarded a 5-star quality rating, the highest rating available, by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services the week of February 25. It was the only 5-star rating awarded in western Pennsylvania and places St. Clair among the top 6.4 percent in the nation to receive CMS’s highest rating for quality;
• Awarded an “A” Grade for Patient Safety by the Leapfrog Group for 6+ consecutive years, thereby placing St. Clair in the top 2 percent of hospitals nationwide;
• Rated Best for Medical, Surgical and Overall Hospital Care in western Pennsylvania by Quantros CareChex;
• Recognized as a national leader in patient satisfaction by multiple independent third-party evaluators;
• Winner of the HIMSS Davies Award, the nation’s highest honor for the use of information technology to improve patient outcomes and value;
• Winner of the Innovator Award from the American Hospital Association for St. Clair’s  co-development of Patient Estimates, the nation’s first interactive cost transparency tool; and
• Selected for inclusion in the prestigious Mayo Clinic Care Network, exclusive in western Pennsylvania.

Joining St. Clair on the 2019 list are such notable institutions as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles); Mayo Clinic Hospital (Jacksonville); NorthShore University Health System (Evanston); and The Miriam Hospital (Providence), the principal teaching affiliate of Brown University.

About St. Clair Hospital

St. Clair Hospital is a nationally recognized integrated health system with more than 2,500 employees and 600 physicians serving 500,000 residents of southwestern Pennsylvania. In 2016, it became a member of the Mayo Clinic Care Network.  As the region’s largest independent hospital, St. Clair participates with all major insurers.