WLTZ 38 | Columbus Georgia Regional News & CommunityWest Georgia Health among 2011 Top Performing Hospitals

PRESS RELEASE

LaGrange, GA – West Georgia Health is among the 2011 Top Performing Hospitals in the Premier healthcare alliance's national QUEST^® collaborative, a voluntary program in which participating hospitals focus on making improvements in patient care reliability, efficiency and safety. For the third consecutive year, West Georgia Health has achieved top performance status, making it one of only three Georgia hospitals and one of only 93 U.S hospitals to achieve this distinction for all three years of the program's existence.

Comprised of more than 270 hospitals across 38 states, QUEST was launched in 2009 and is the most comprehensive hospital collaborative in the nation committed to measuring, comparing and scaling innovative solutions for the complex task of caring for patients. It is structured to help hospitals:

• save lives by eliminating avoidable hospital mortalities;
• safely reduce the cost of care by reducing costs for each patient's hospitalization;
• deliver the most reliable and effective care by ensuring that patients receive all appropriate evidence-based care;
• improve patient safety by preventing incidents of harm, including healthcare conditions and healthcare-acquired infections and birth injuries;
• improve patient experience by improving the patient's overall care and reinforcing loyalty to the care providing facility;
• reduce readmissions by improving care coordination across the continuum to avoid preventable readmissions.

As a charter member of the QUEST: High Performing Hospitals collaborative, West Georgia Health qualified for a monetary award that was divided among the 93 hospitals that achieved Top Performing status all three years of the program.

"While our share of the monetary award was nominal, it is significant in the fact that it represents our commitment to delivering top notch care to our patients," said West Georgia Health President/CEO Jerry Fulks. "Being a QUEST member means redesigning the way we operate so that patients receive reliable, safe and efficient healthcare every time they come in. By collaborating to share our patient outcomes data and provider best practices with other members, we are leading the industry in driving the best results, which creates a competitive advantage."

QUEST supports hospitals in delivering the best care possible, as well as sharing collaborative solutions to improve healthcare nationwide and influence public policies. Together, the current 278 QUEST members share ideas, strategies and proven practices to reduce variation, an approach that has been shown to improve care quality, safety and cost.

In just 30 months, QUEST members saved 25,235 lives and reduced healthcare spending by $2.85 billion through the delivery of high-quality, evidence-based care to 63,094 patients. In addition:

• Members' observed mortality is 5 percent lower than non-participants when compared to what is expected.
• Member costs for inpatient care have increased only 4 percent, compared to a national cost increase of 21 percent.
  • Members began increasing adherence to evidence-based care delivery in patient experience, harm and readmissions last year to support new improvement goals such as those proposed by the Partnership for Patients program.

Susan DeVore, Premier President and CEO said, "These hospitals challenged themselves to overcome process failures and excessive costs by measuring themselves against each other to drive success. The achievements made by QUEST members are remarkable as they continue to reveal what is possible in healthcare. West Georgia Health is a true standard setter for top quality care in America, as they support the health of people in their community."

An advisory panel of experts from the country's top health organizations, such as the National Quality Forum, The Joint Commission and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, guides collaborative members to achieve success.

(SOURCE: West Georgia Health)