Geisinger Medical Center named to 100 Top Hospitals list for second straight year

DANVILLE (PA) –Geisinger Medical Center has been named to the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®: National Benchmarks for Success list, which annually examines changing performance levels in US hospitals across five critical performance areas: outcomes of care, patient safety, efficiency, financial performance and growing community service. This is the second consecutive year that Geisinger Medical Center has been named to the 100 Top Hospitals list.

“Geisinger Medical Center is the only major teaching hospital in Pennsylvania named to Solucient’s list,” said Chief Administrative Officer, Lynn Miller. “This 100 Top Hospitals designation acknowledges Geisinger’s clinical excellence and patient safety achievements along with our commitment to growing our services in the community,” she added.  “To be recognized as a top performer in patient safety and efficiency points to Geisinger’s commitment to delivering the very highest quality of care for those we serve.”
 
"The 100 Top Hospital award winners continue to demonstrate significant distinctions in provision of value to their communities, as shown by objective differences in clinical outcomes, patient safety, efficient operations and financial stability," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president of Solucient's Center for Healthcare Improvement, which is responsible for the 100 Top Hospitals program.

“This Top 100 recognition is one measure of our team’s efforts on behalf of patients,” said Chief Nursing Officer Susan Hallick, RN. “Top to bottom, Geisinger nurses, physicians, residents, fellows, and support staff are committed to quality and excellence,” she said.

“One of the major factors contributing to this selection is growth,” said Chief Medical Officer Joseph Bisordi, MD.  “With the opening of the Geisinger Center for Health Research and the announcement of a new nine-story Hospital for Advanced Medicine, we continue to expand our services to provide the best possible care to our patients, right in the communities in which they live,” he noted.

This 14th edition of the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®: National Benchmarks for Success study uses a balanced scorecard approach and scores hospitals according to nine key organization-wide measures: risk-adjusted mortality, risk-adjusted complications, patient safety, growth in patient volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay, expense per adjusted discharge, profit from operations, cash to debt ratio and tangible assets per discharge.

This achievement by Geisinger Medical Center marks the sixth time that a Geisinger Health System hospital has been recognized by Solucient as among the country’s top hospitals.

Geisinger Health System is an integrated physician-led health services organization serving more than two million residents throughout central and northeastern Pennsylvania, and one of the largest rural healthcare providers in the United States. It includes a 650-member group practice, tertiary/quaternary medical centers, one of the nation’s first rural children’s hospitals, acute-care community hospitals, adult and pediatric trauma centers, an alcohol and chemical dependency treatment center, two research centers, 40 community practice offices, and one of the largest not-for-profit rural HMOs in the country.

Celebrating its 92nd year, Geisinger Medical Center is a 410-bed teaching, referral and research hospital, Level I trauma center with additional qualifications in pediatrics, and is one of the largest hospitals in the region. It is also home to the Janet Weis Children’s Hospital, a comprehensive provider of pediatric care. The hospital’s medical staff represents more than 75 specialties and includes about 350 physicians, who have distinguished themselves nationally and internationally as clinicians, teachers, researchers and leaders in the healthcare industry.

According to this year’s Solucient study, benchmark hospitals had a higher percentage of sicker patients requiring more complex treatment, yet had better patient outcomes and lower costs.

The study stated that if all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as those being cared for at Geisinger Medical Center and the nation’s top hospitals, as many as 100,000 more Medicare patients could survive. An additional 114,000 patient stays could be complication-free each year - at an estimated annual savings of $10.9 billion.

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