NORTHAMPTON, Mass. – Two independent rating organizations separately verify that patients who choose Cooley Dickinson Hospital for their health needs receive better quality and safer outcomes, even as the hospital has reduced the cost of care.

Cooley Dickinson Hospital is among the 2011 Top Performing Hospitals in the Premier healthcare alliance’s national QUEST collaborative. The following data demonstrates that CDH is doing better than the benchmarks set by the collaborative:

• In the delivery of evidence-based care, CDH ranked 10 percentage points above the top performing hospitals’ score of 84 percent. (For example, CDH provided vaccinations to all pneumonia patients or prescribed a high blood pressure or chest pain medication to all heart attack patients prior to discharge more frequently than other QUEST hospitals.)
• CDH reduced avoidable hospital mortality with a rate of 0.72, compared to the 0.98 needed to be a top hospital (lower is better).
• When it comes to the cost of care, CDH’s cost per adjusted admission was $780 lower than that for other community hospitals in our size group.

This is the first year CDH placed among the top performing QUEST hospitals, only two Massachusetts hospitals made the ranking.

“Being a QUEST member means redesigning the way we provide care so that patients receive reliable, safe and efficient healthcare every time they visit Cooley Dickinson,” said Mark Novotny, MD, CDH’s chief medical officer.

QUEST, the most comprehensive hospital collaborative (300 hospitals) in the nation, measures, compares, and scales solutions for the complex task of caring for patients. It helps hospitals: Eliminate avoidable hospital mortalities, reduce costs for each patient’s hospitalization, ensure that patients receive all appropriate evidence-based care, prevent incidents of harm, including healthcare conditions and healthcare-associated infections and birth injuries, improve patient experience, and improve care coordination across the continuum to avoid preventable readmissions.

For patients and employers who are looking for value in healthcare, The Leapfrog Group reported that CDH ranked in the top 10 percent on overall value, a measure that takes into account the quality of care hospitals provide. This is the second consecutive year that CDH has ranked in Leapfrog’s top 10 percent.

“Achieving high overall value is the key success factor for health systems,” Novotny added. “More than ever, employers and patients expect superb outcomes at low cost.

Among the Leapfrog database of 1,066 hospitals from 43 states, Cooley Dickinson earned roll-up scores of 81 on quality and 88 on resource use in Leapfrog’s 2011 Hospital Survey. The value score combines the quality and resource scores, with quality weighted most. Cooley Dickinson’s 83 for value is 11 points above the 72 score needed to rank in the top 10 percent.
Novotny said the Leapfrog scores validate that Cooley Dickinson is “one of the best [hospitals] in the country and in Massachusetts. A value score in the top 10 percent means Cooley Dickinson offers good value to the community we serve and the employers who insure many CDH patients.”

Leapfrog’s quality score is based on a hospital’s performance on 20+ national quality standards. The standards measured include care provided for common conditions such as pneumonia and normal deliveries of babies, intensive care unit physician staffing levels, and performance on preventing conditions such as pressure ulcers and central-line associated bloodstream infections.

Leapfrog describes its survey as, “the gold standard for comparing hospitals’ performance on the national standards of safety, quality, and efficiency that are most relevant to consumers and purchasers of care.”

About the Premier healthcare alliance, Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award recipient

Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals and 80,000-plus other healthcare sites using the power of collaboration to lead the transformation to high quality, cost-effective care. Owned by hospitals, health systems and other providers, Premier maintains the nation's most comprehensive repository of clinical, financial and outcomes information and operates a leading healthcare purchasing network. A world leader in helping deliver measurable improvements in care, Premier has worked with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the United Kingdom's National Health Service North West to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Premier also has an office in Washington. www.premierinc.com.

About The Leapfrog Group
The Leapfrog Group is a voluntary program aimed at mobilizing employer purchasing power to alert America’s health industry that big leaps in health care safety, quality and customer value will be recognized and rewarded. Among other initiatives, Leapfrog works with its employer members to encourage transparency and easy access to health care information as well as rewards for hospitals that have a proven record of high quality care.

Hospitals that participate in The Leapfrog Hospital Survey achieve hospital-wide improvements that translate into millions of lives and dollars saved. Leapfrog’s purchaser members use Survey results to inform their employees and purchasing strategies. In 2009, 1206 hospitals across the country completed The Leapfrog Hospital Survey. www.theleapfroggroup.org

About Cooley Dickinson Hospital
Cooley Dickinson, a full-service community hospital, is ranked in the top 5 percent of all U.S. hospitals in patient safety by HealthGrades®, the country's leading independent health care ratings organization. It is the only hospital in the Springfield area to achieve the HealthGrades Patient Safety Excellence Award™ for three consecutive years. Cooley Dickinson’s staff of 1,650 professionals and nearly 300 affiliated physicians comprise a network of emergency, surgical, clinical, rehabilitative, hospice and home care expertise that treats 40,000 emergency patients per year, delivers 800 babies, and collaborates with Massachusetts General Hospital to deliver comprehensive cancer care. Cooley Dickinson's vision is to be the nation's premier not-for-profit community hospital, able to provide local access to the most advanced clinical treatments in a caring and neighborly setting. Learn more at www.cooley-dickinson.org.

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