Research Highlights

On this year’s report, only 6 Illinois hospitals have received the 100 Top Hospitals National distinction four years in a row in the 15-year history of the award. Only one of the Illinois hospitals is a teaching hospitals and the rest are community hospitals. Of the 6 Illinois hospitals, just four were from the greater Chicago area. Silver Cross is:

• The only hospital in Illinois to be recognized for the last four consecutive years.
• One of 15 hospitals in the nation that have been recognized for the last four consecutive years.
• One of only 44 hospitals in the nation that have received 100 Top Hospitals National recognition for four years (not in a row).
• One of only four hospitals in Illinois that have been recognized four or more times.

According to Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president in the Center for Healthcare Improvement at Thomson Healthcare, the 100 Top Hospitals National winners including Silver Cross ranks above the top 90 percent on hospital-wide performance when compared with its national peers. In fact, Silver Cross did extremely well across several key measures ranking significantly higher than other like hospitals for its mortality (death) rate, complication rate, congestive heart failure care and surgical care.

The report also states that the 100 Top Hospitals have higher survival rates, keep more patients complication-free and have lower expenses—all while maintaining financial stability. Thomson Healthcare estimates that if all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as the 100 Top Hospitals National Award winners:

• More than 120,000 additional patients would survive each year.
• More than 138,000 patient complications would be avoided annually.

According to the study, the highest performance levels in patient safety were achieved by the 100 hospitals in the study that delivered the highest balanced performance across quality, efficiency, and financial stability. If all hospitals had performed at the level of these leading hospitals on the eight patient safety measures studied, they would have saved $253 million and 7,914 lives during the time period the study examined.