DENVER (Sept. 15, 2017) — Vizient today announced UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital (UCH) as the 7th-highest performing academic hospital in the United States for delivering quality health care.
The 2017 Vizient Bernard A. Birnbaum, MD, Quality Leadership Award recognizes UCH for demonstrating superior quality and safety performance as measured by the Vizient Quality and Accountability Study, which has been conducted annually since 2005. The award was presented on Thursday, Sept. 14, during the 2017 Vizient Clinical Connections Summit held in Denver.
“University of Colorado Hospital provides high quality care through prioritizing patient outcomes and patient experience, and we are pleased to be recognized for these efforts,” said Will Cook, CEO and president of UCH. “Our partnership with the University of Colorado School of Medicine gives UCHealth patients throughout the region access to advanced care including clinical trials, helping patients get back to living their extraordinary lives.”
This year, 107 academic medical centers and 161 community hospitals were included in the Vizient Quality and Accountability Study. The study measured performance based on the Institute of Medicine’s six domains of care: safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, equity and patient centeredness.
“This award is a reflection of the high quality care that patients receive at University of Colorado Hospital,” said UCHealth Chief Quality Officer Dr. Jeffrey Glasheen. “The data show our patients have higher survival rates, fewer readmissions and shorter hospital stays. Ultimately, UCHealth’s focus on high quality, personalized, safe care has saved the lives of hundreds of people, and this recognition is a wonderful validation of what this means to the patients who entrust their care to us.”
The Vizient Quality and Accountability Study helps academic medical centers and community hospitals identify structures and processes associated with high performance in quality and safety across a broad spectrum of patient care activity. The study ranked University of Colorado Hospital as the nation’s #1 academic hospital in both 2011 and 2012, and a top-10 hospital in 2010, 2013 and 2015.
In addition to being named among the top 10 academic hospitals in the United States, U.S. News & World Report ranks UCH as the best in the state, and the 15th overall in the nation.
Vizient was founded in 2015 as the combination of VHA Inc., a national health care network of not-for-profit hospitals; University HealthSystem Consortium, an alliance of the nation’s leading academic medical centers; and Novation, the health care constracting company they jointly owned. In February 2016, Vizient acquired MedAssets’ Spend and Clinical Resource Management (SCM) segment, which included Sg2 health care intelligence.