Monday, April 23, 2018
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Roper St. Francis Healthcare named Top 15 Health System for sixth time
For the sixth consecutive year, Roper St. Francis Healthcare has been honored as one of the Top 15 Health Systems in the country for its overall performance.
Roper St. Francis Healthcare is one of just six healthcare systems to rank among the Top 15 for six years, and only one healthcare system, the Mayo Foundation in Minnesota, has been ranked longer. The ranking by IBM Watson Health, formerly Truven Health Analytics, was released Monday.
“This award is meaningful not only for our teammates and providers, but for the entire Lowcountry,” said Lorraine Lutton, president and chief executive officer of Roper St. Francis Healthcare. “It means patients can stay in our community to receive some of the best healthcare in the country. It means patients who come to Roper St. Francis Healthcare can expect safer, more affordable and higher quality care. It’s an honor to receive this award just one time, so to have received it six consecutive times is amazing. I’m so proud of our team, and I want to thank everyone for helping to make this possible.”
The Top 15 Health Systems study evaluated 338 health systems and 2,422 health system member hospitals across nine clinical and operational performance benchmarks. Roper St. Francis Healthcare was recognized in the small health system category.
Winners have:
- 17.6 percent fewer complications and 16.2 percent fewer healthcare-associated infections
- 14.6 percent fewer in-hospital deaths
- Released patients from the hospital nearly a half-day sooner
- Shortened emergency department wait times by 40 minutes per patients
- Lower spend with in-hospital and post-discharge costs being 5.6 percent lower
- Received higher patients satisfaction scores.
The study found a small but discernable difference in the level of individual hospital alignment within top-performing health systems than is found in peer group health systems. Specifically, the annual volatility in key performance measures is 1.9 percentage points lower among the member hospitals of winning health systems than it is among peer group health system members.
The trend of lower overall variability, or volatility, within individual member hospital performance metrics among winning health systems is statistically significant over a five-year period.
“Intuitively, many healthcare professionals have believed for years that individual hospital alignment is a key to health system success, but alignment has been difficult to quantify. Put simply, we wanted to determine how well health systems are achieving the goal of delivering a consistent patient experience in each of their facilities, and start benchmarking that performance each year,” said Jean Chenoweth, senior program director for the 100 Top Hospitals Programs with IBM Watson Health. “Based on our data, it is clear that better hospital alignment does indeed play a role in overall health system performance, and it is something we will be investigating further.”
Health systems do not apply for consideration, and winners do not pay to market their awards.