News

Gerber Memorial Once Again Among Nation's Top Hospitals

Fremont, MI...March 1, 2006 – Gerber Memorial Health Services (GMHS) in Fremont is one of the country's Top 100 Hospitals – for the second year in a row. That's according to the latest national benchmarks for success in 2005 put out by Solucient.

Now in its 13th year, the study uses a scorecard based on objective statistical measurement of performance in five critical areas: clinical outcomes, patient safety, operational efficiency, financial stability and growth. Winning hospitals display an ability to provide sustainable and reliable health care services to their communities.

"These hospitals are strong organizations that can perform across all areas: quality, safety, financial, efficiency and growth," says Jean Chenoweth, Solucient's senior vice president of performance improvement and the 100 Top Hospitals program.

"We've put an emphasis on our associates being creative and contributing to efficiency and needed changes for the comfort and safety of our patients," said Ned Hughes, President of Gerber Memorial. "Our success in receiving this recognition really reflects our culture of learning how we can be better from any and all sources, including our staff and our patients."

The Solucient study estimates that if all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as those in the 100 Top Hospitals winners across all categories:

  • An additional 106,312 patients would survive each year.
  • More than 117,000 patient complications would be avoided annually.
  • Expenses would decline by an aggregate $7.6+ billion a year.
  • The average patient stay would decrease by more than half a day.

According to Modern Healthcare magazine, "of the 100 hospitals on this year's list, medium and smaller hospitals (such as Gerber Memorial) performed as well or better than larger hospitals and the differences in scores compared with their peers were more significant. In the small-hospital category, for example, the median mortality index was 0.73 compared with 0.98 for peers, a 26% difference."

"These top 100 hospitals react quicker to challenges than their peers, and they focus on all aspects of care, not just one," Chenoweth says. Solucient scored facilities on nine measures: mortality, complications, patient safety, length of stay, expense per discharge, operating profit margin, cash-to-total-debt ratio, tangible assets per discharge and growth in patient volume, a new category that includes inpatient admissions, emergency visits and outpatient surgery visits.

GMHS has received this recognition three times before as a Top 100 hospital in the General category (1994, 1999, 2004), and once as a Top 100 Orthopedic Hospital. The 13th edition of the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success study analyzed 3,091 acute-care hospitals for 2003 and 2004 using the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review data. Solucient, a healthcare information company based in Evanston, Ill., also used Medicare cost reports and outpatient data from the CMS. The measures were calculated for five classes of hospitals with the following number of winners in each:

  • Major Teaching - 15 winners
  • Teaching - 25 winners
  • Large Community, 250+ Beds - 20 winners
  • Medium Community, 100 to 249 Beds - 20 winners
  • Small Community, 25 to 99 Beds - 20 winners (includes Gerber Memorial)

Other Michigan hospitals honored in this years list from the west side of the state include: Bronson Methodist, Kalamazoo; Munson Medical, Traverse City; Holland Hospital, Holland; and Mecosta County, Big Rapids.

Solucient® is an information products company serving the healthcare industry. It is the market leader in providing tools and vital insights that healthcare managers use to improve the performance of their organizations.