UW Hospital and Clinics Among Top Five Teaching Hospitals

A nationally recognized "scorecard" for measuring the quality of major teaching hospitals put University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in the nation's top five best-performing institutions.

The annual assessment measured the performance of teaching hospitals in several areas known to be essential to delivering excellent care consistently across a wide variety of populations. This year, 88 academic medical centers were included in the analysis.

UW Hospital performed well on the five key measures that the University Healthsystem Consortium (UHC) assessed.

Mortality: comparing the observed death rate to the expected death rate for patients in a wide variety of medical specialties

Effectiveness: indicating whether patients are receiving all care for which they are eligible; how many need to be readmitted within 30 days for a related condition

Safety: based on eight patient-safety indicators used by federal health-quality agencies

Equity: assessing if hospital performance is consistently strong between male and female patients, white and non-white and people of varying socio-economic levels

Patient-Centeredness: measuring how highly patients themselves rate their experience at the hospital

The annual ranking is produced by UHC, a national organization representing approximately 90 percent of the nation's non-profit academic medical centers.

"Breaking the top five in this assessment-which is based on strong evidence of what works to improve patient care-is a tremendous achievement for our organization," says president and CEO Donna Katen-Bahensky. "I am especially proud for our physicians and staff, who share with our leadership a focus on results and accountability."

Katen-Bahensky says the ranking verifies that UW Hospital performs well across the board, not just in particular areas.

"Consistently high performance across all areas is a central goal of the quality improvement effort nationally and certainly is of highest importance to UW Hospital and Clinics," says Katen-Bahensky.

The other four institutions in the top five are Methodist Hospital, Indianapolis; Rush University Medical Center, Chicago; St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, Houston; and University Medical Center, Houston.

This article appears in the fall 2008 issue of Quarterly.