On Tuesday, the Joint Commission recognized more than 1,000 hospitals in California and other states as “Top Performers” for achieving high performance on key quality measures, the Biloxi Sun Herald reports (Biloxi Sun Herald, 11/16).
The fifth-annual “Top Performer on Key Quality Measures” list was included in the organization’s 2015 annual America’s Hospitals: Improving Quality and Safety report (Joint Commission release, 11/17).
Details of Report
The Joint Commission evaluated hospitals on 49 accountability measures “of evidence-based care processes closely linked to positive patient outcomes.”
Like previous years, hospitals submitted 2014 data on:
– Children’s asthma care
– Heart attack care
– Heart failure care
– Immunization
– Inpatient psychiatric services
– Perinatal care
– Pneumonia care
– Stroke care
– Surgical care
– Venous thromboembolism care
In addition, the commission added two sets of measures related to tobacco treatment and substance misuse in 2015.
To earn “Top Performer” status, a hospital must:
– Meet or exceed 95% performance on a composite score for all reported accountability measures
– Meet or exceed 95% performance on each and every reported accountability measure where there are at least 30 denominator cases
– Have at least one core measure set with a composite rate of at least 95%, where all applicable individual accountability measures have a performance rate of at least 95%
A 95% score indicates that a “hospital provided an evidence-based practice 95 times out of every 100 opportunities,” such as giving a heart attack patient aspirin at arrival (Joint Commission report, 11/17).
National Results
This year, the Joint Commission recognized 1,043 hospitals at “Top Performers,” representing 31.5% of all hospitals accredited by the commission (Joint Commission release, 11/17). The addition of several new accountability measures for 2015 and the retirement of others make year-to-year comparisons difficult.
This year, 665 hospitals were just one measure short of gaining “Top Performer” status.
Meanwhile, the Joint Commission recognized 117 hospitals for being “Top Performers” for all five years of the program.
Calif. Hospitals on the List
More than 300 California hospitals submitted data to the Joint Commission in 2014, and 95 were named “Top Performers” — down from 97 in 2013.
Meanwhile, 10 California hospitals have been named “Top Performers” for all five years of the program:
– Encino Hospital Medical Center
– Garden Grove Hospital and Medical Center
– Kaiser Foundation Hospital-South Bay in Harbor City
– The Huntington Beach Hospital
– La Plama Intercommunity Hospital
– Memorial Hospital Los Banos
– Prime Healthcare Paradise Valley in National City
– Prime Healthcare Services-Shasta in Redding
– Sutter Maternity & Surgery Center of Santa Cruz
– Kaiser Foundation Hospital-South San Francisco
‘Top Performer’ Program To Be Suspended
In a letter accompanying the report, Joint Commission President and CEO Mark Chassin announced that the “Top Performer” program will be temporarily suspended. “Due to the evolving national performance measure environment — particularly within [CMS] — we have decided to place the current ‘Top Performer’ program in hiatus for a year to be reevaluated,” he wrote.
Chassin expects that the Commission will make a revamped list available in 2017 (Joint Commission report, 11/17).