Dive Brief:
- The number of hospitals meeting the Joint Commission's "Top Performer" standards this year shot up 77 percent from last year, and 171 percent from 2011.
- The 1099 hospitals winning this distinction received a composite score of 95 percent or above for all performance measures reported on 2012.
- Hospitals achieving this goal reported on 40 individual measures identified has having the greatest positive impact on outcomes, including measures of performance for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care.
Dive Insight:
So, a total of 1,099 hospitals have now met the Joint Commission's exacting standards for being top performers. The question is, what accounts for the big jump in meeting these criteria over the last two years? Perhaps the pressure to demonstrate positive outcomes to value-based purchasers has had an effect. Regardless, there's still about 2,200 hospitals accredited by the Joint Commission that didn't make the cut. Clearly, there's a lot more work to do in bringing up care quality across the board.