St. Luke’s University Health Network hospitals are among the safest in the country, according to a recent government report.
The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has recognized St. Luke’s alongside Texas-based Houston Methodist and the Mayo Clinic as the nation’s three highest-performing health systems for safety and quality. This was part of the first AHRQ-funded review of health care systems to find top performers in safety, to identify their best practices in safety culture, leadership, and governance.
St. Luke’s selection was based on publicly available data and information from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey data and ratings from the Leapfrog Group. The three highest-performing health systems were identified from a review of 4,791 U.S. hospitals and 135 health care systems containing at least six hospitals.
St. Luke’s was one of three health care systems in the country with more than one hospital demonstrating safety and patient experience performance better than 75 percent above the national average. According to the report, five out of the nine St. Luke’s hospitals looked at were identified as part of the top 65 performing hospitals in the country, though all nine demonstrated high performance. Out of those hospitals, St. Luke’s University Hospital, Fountain Hill and St. Luke’s Hospital–Miners were selected to be visited by AHRQ and its contractors to see how they are operated and what makes them different.
Similar visits were also conducted at Mayo Clinic and Houston Methodist hospitals. Donna Sabol, St. Luke’s chief quality officer, said that the visitors found that the three health care systems displayed common features. She said their governance prioritizes strong structures and strategic planning to support patient safety and quality. The organizations take the time to identify and develop emerging leaders, expect excellence from them and it is clear that leaders in the organization care about their subordinates. The cultures of these organizations hold safety as a core value.
Sabol that these organizations also review objective data and use that to improve practices and adopt new ones.
“A No. 1 priority in our organization is our patients, and providing the highest quality, safest, most cost-effective care to our patients,” Sabol said.
Sabol said that St. Luke’s prioritization of safety and quality goes back about 20 years, when it revised its vision statement to include that it would achieve top-rated performance in national studies on quality.
“It has been longstanding. It’s been developed over years, but critical to it is making sure that we have strong leadership. You know that that is just critical to lead the organization and continue leading the organization with this vision to provide our patients with the highest level quality and patient safety,” Sabol said.