Martin Memorial Named One of Nation’s 100 Top Hospitals for the Fifth Time

Martin Memorial Medical Center has been named one of the 2009 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals in the United States. It is the fifth time Martin Memorial has earned this esteemed distinction.

The study has been conducted annually since 1993. In that time, only 91 hospitals have won the award five times or more – about 3 percent of the total hospitals surveyed – including 14 from Florida. Research by Thomson Reuters indicates hospitals that win the award three or more times have particularly high levels of performance over many years.

Martin Memorial was one of 20 winners in the Large Community Hospitals category (250 or more acute care beds in service and not classified as a teaching hospital) and one of only five hospitals from the nearly 300 hospitals in the state of Florida to be honored among the Top 100 for 2009.

“This is an extraordinary achievement for everyone associated with Martin Memorial,” said Mark E. Robitaille, president and chief executive officer of Martin Memorial. “Being named as one of the 100 Top Hospitals is a direct result of the hard work and dedication of our associates, physicians, volunteers and board leadership. It is also a reflection of our commitment to provide exceptional health care to residents of Martin and St. Lucie counties. We are proud that we have developed a culture of performance excellence, with a strong focus on continually improving clinical quality, patient satisfaction and operational productivity.”

The Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks study evaluates performance in a variety of areas: mortality, medical complications, patient safety, average length of stay, expenses, profitability, patient satisfaction, adherence to clinical standards of care, and post-discharge mortality and readmission rates for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia.

“This year’s study magnified the value that 100 Top Hospital award winners provide to their communities. Even during the economic downturn, the 100 Top Hospitals maintained positive operating margins while raising the bar for clinical quality and patient satisfaction,” said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs at Thomson Reuters. “The insistence of these hospitals’ leaders – their boards, executive teams and medical staffs – on overall excellence makes the difference.”

To conduct the 100 Top Hospitals study, Thomson Reuters researchers evaluated 3,000 short-term, acute care, non-federal hospitals. They used public information – Medicare cost reports, Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) data, and core measures and patient satisfaction data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Compare data set.

According to the study’s researchers, if all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as those treated by 100 Top Hospitals award winners:

• More than 98,000 additional patients would survive each year.
• More than 197,000 patient complications would be avoided annually.
• Expenses would decline by an aggregate $5.5 billion a year.
• The average patient stay would decrease by nearly half a day.