News
Saint Vincent Health Center showcases commitment, processes leading to high quality patient care
Top-performer in groundbreaking CMS/Premier healthcare alliance pay-for-performance project shares best practices with more than 30 national hospitals
ERIE, PA. (November 13, 2007) – Saint Vincent Health Center has been selected by the Premier Inc. healthcare alliance to host a one-day open house to demonstrate how the Erie, Pa. hospital earned top rankings in the country in the Premier, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) pay-for-performance (P4P) project.
Representatives from more than 30 hospitals throughout the country will travel to Erie on November 13 to attend the event to learn how Saint Vincent was able to attain and sustain top-decile performance in the project. Hospitals from northwest Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Virginia and as far away as Texas will be attending.
According to results from the first two years of the project, more than 260 hospitals participating in the CMS/Premier HQID project have raised overall quality by 11.8 percent in two years, based on their delivery of 30 nationally standardized and widely accepted care measures to patients in five clinical areas.
In the first and second years, Saint Vincent ranked among the top hospitals nationwide for clinical quality excellence in the areas of pneumonia, coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), acute myocardial infarction, heart failure and hip and knee replacement. Saint Vincent received the fifth highest reimbursement award of any hospital in the project in the first year in the clinical area of CABG and the 10th highest reimbursement in the second year of the project in the clinical area of pneumonia. Projections for the third year indicate performance in the top two deciles in all five clinical areas.
“What this means for our patients is that they are assured of receiving the highest levels of care in the nation, that they will be well sooner, which can end up ultimately costing less,” said C. Angela Bontempo, FACHE, Saint Vincent president and CEO. “For Saint Vincent, the primary focus is and always has been providing the best possible care to our patients. That was the mandate set forth by the Sisters of Saint Joseph when Saint Vincent was founded more than 132 years ago, and it is the reason we were among the first hospitals in the country to, in 1999, implement the evidence-based practices being utilized today in the Premier project.”
Saint Vincent has received over $280,000 in quality-based rewards, more than any of the 10 Pennsylvania hospitals participating in the project. CMS has awarded incentive payments of more than $17 million to top-performing hospitals, representing the top 20 percent of hospitals in each of the project’s five clinical areas, through the first two years of the project.
In addition, improvements in quality of care saved an estimated 1,284 heart attack patients, according to an analysis of mortality rates at hospitals participating in the HQID project. Patients also received approximately 150,000 additional recommended evidence-based clinical quality measures, such as smoking cessation counseling, discharge instructions and pneumococcal vaccination.
According to Saint Vincent executive vice president Joseph Cacchione, MD, FACC, “The national benchmarks in the Premier project have pushed us even further in our efforts toward quality improvement. I’m proud to say this accomplishment comes from the very top down – from our board to our doctors, nurses and staff. Each of them has been empowered, and that is the reason Saint Vincent has been able to consistently perform among the top one or two hospitals in the country.”
Other key factors in achieving top levels of quality, according to Cacchione, include physician engagement in all quality processes, quality information flow and decision support and post-discharge follow-up. Unique clinical processes were also important to the effort, including the use of tablet PCs by case managers at the patient bedside to ensure 100 percent adherence to the use of best practices.
“It’s a core function of the Premier alliance to accelerate the improvement by sharing best practices, not only among our members but with the rest of the healthcare community,” said Stephanie Alexander, senior vice president for Premier Healthcare Informatics. “As a top performer in the HQID project, Saint Vincent is a prime example of a facility transforming healthcare through the delivery of reliable, high quality patient care.”
In addition to consistently ranking among the top few hospitals nationwide in the CMS/Premier project, Saint Vincent has been ranked as the number one healthcare organization in Pennsylvania by Health Insights in delivery of evidence-based care for heart attack, heart failure and community-acquired pneumonia.
About Premier Inc., 2006 Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award
recipient
Serving 1,700 hospitals and more than 49,000 other healthcare sites, Premier
is the largest healthcare alliance in the United States dedicated to
improving patient outcomes while safely reducing the cost of care. Owned by
not-for-profit hospitals, Premier operates one of the nation's largest
healthcare purchasing network, the most comprehensive repository of hospital
clinical and financial information and one of the largest policy-holder
owned, hospital professional liability risk-retention groups in healthcare.
Headquartered in San Diego, Premier has offices in Charlotte, N.C.,
Philadelphia and Washington. For more information, visit
www.premierinc.com.
About Saint Vincent Health Center
Saint Vincent Health Center, selected as one of the Best Places to Work in
Pennsylvania, is a 436 bed not-for-profit tertiary care facility located in
Erie, Pa. Saint Vincent, founded in 1875 by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of
Northwestern Pennsylvania as the area’s first hospital is now the region’s
third largest employer with 2,900 employees. Saint Vincent has earned
national recognition as a healthcare quality leader by the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, the Joint Commission, and The Pennsylvania
Health Care Cost Containment Council. The hospital has consistently scored
in the top 10 percent among hospitals in the nation on a number of quality
measures.