This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Another group has devised a way to rank hospitals, and the results may be surprising.
The Joint Commission, which accredits health centers, published its first list of "top performers" in the arena of quality care — most of them small, rural hospitals and Veterans Affairs medical centers.
Absent from the list are marquee "honor roll" institutions of US News & World Report fame: Johns Hopkins, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Massachusetts General and Brigham & Women's.
The only Utah facility to be recognized was Mountain View Hospital, a 130-bed acute care center in Payson.
Hospital experts were hard-pressed to explain why the state's two largest hospital chains, Intermountain Healthcare and University of Utah Health Care, didn't make the cut.
The Joint Commission looked not at patient outcomes, but at how well hospitals stick to proven treatment protocols, such as administering antibiotics to pneumonia patients in intensive care and aspirin to heart attack victims upon arrival at the hospital.
For this reason, "t's hard to make the case that some health centers fell short because they serve a more complicated, acute mix of patients," acknowledged Jill Vicory, spokeswoman for the Utah Hospital Association. "I can't offer any justification one way or another."
The ratings were based on 2010 data and weighed hospitals' performance on 22 clinical steps shown to yield the best care for each of the following conditions: heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgical care and children's asthma.
Hospitals didn't have to report results on all steps. But to make the commission's top 405, they needed to follow steps they did report 95 percent of the time.
"Today, the public expects transparency," said commission president Mark R. Chassin. "Hospitals that commit themselves to accreditation-related quality improvement efforts, such as the use of evidence-based treatments, create better outcomes for patients and, ultimately, a healthier nation."
Data were drawn on 3,000 accredited health centers and most fared quite well with a composite compliance rate of 90 percent or better.
Starting next year, the commission will deny accreditation to hospitals that don't meet 85 percent compliance. Only 121 fell short of that mark this year.
Mountain View CEO Kevin Johnson said his hospital's high marks are the result of a concerted effort among its 200 doctors and 400 employees to meet federally endorsed standards of care.
"We've always done very well on our ability to deliver consistently high-quality care at a competitive price," Johnson said, citing a Best In State award by a health consulting group, Data Advantage LLC, which looked at quality, affordability and patient satisfaction.
More information
O For the full report and list of "top performers," go to › bit.ly/pNqNiG.