Mayo Clinic Hospital named 'Top Hospital' by The Leapfrog Group

Thursday, December 03, 2009

PHOENIX — Mayo Clinic Hospital is the only hospital in Arizona to be named a 2009 "Top Hospital" by The Leapfrog Group, a national initiative driven by organizations that purchase health care who are working toward improvements in the safety, quality and affordability of health care for Americans.

Top Hospitals are named based on the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, which is the only national survey that looks at public comparisons of hospitals on key issues such as mortality rates for certain common procedures, infection rates, safety and efficiency.

Qualifying criteria for Leapfrog's Top Hospital Award remain the same as in 2008, with one added dimension: Once hospitals demonstrate top quality, they must also top the list in efficiency.

"This year's class of Top Hospitals not only hits the mark in areas such as medication error prevention and preventing ICU deaths, they also use their resources wisely, providing excellent and efficient outcomes for patients," said Leah Binder, CEO, The Leapfrog Group. "Regardless of what happens to health care reform, these hospitals are the future."

Mayo Clinic Hospital is one of only 45 U.S. hospitals named as a Top Hospital in the 2009 survey — a list that includes 34 urban, eight children's and three rural hospitals. Mayo Clinic Hospital ranked among the urban hospitals, and was measured for meeting Leapfrog standards in terms of reducing medication errors, meeting stringent performance standards for complex, high-risk procedures and for scoring in the top category for efficiency. Efficiency is measured by examining outcomes, hospital length-of-stay, readmission rates and incidence of hospital-acquired conditions and infections — as applied to heart bypass surgery, heart angioplasty, heart attack and pneumonia patients.

"By participating in this survey, we are confirming our commitment to continuous improvement and to providing high quality care to our patients, said Victor F. Trastek, M.D., CEO, Mayo Clinic in Arizona. "We are proud to be transparent about our efforts on behalf of safety, quality and efficiency."

Additional Mayo Clinic hospitals that were recognized as 2009 Top Hospitals by Leapfrog were Saint Marys Hospital and Methodist Hospital in Rochester, Minn.

The 2009 Top Hospitals list is based on 1,206 hospitals that responded to the Leapfrog Hospital Survey as of Sept. 23, 2009.

To request an appointment at Mayo Clinic, please call
480-422-1490 for the Arizona campus, 904-494-6484 for the Florida campus, or 507-216-4573 for the Minnesota campus.

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About Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. Doctors from every medical specialty work together to care for patients, joined by common systems and a philosophy of "the needs of the patient come first." More than 3,700 physicians, scientists and researchers, and 50,100 allied health staff work at Mayo Clinic, which has campuses in Rochester, Minn; Jacksonville, Fla; and Scottsdale/Phoenix, Ariz.; and community-based providers in more than 70 locations in southern Minnesota., western Wisconsin and northeast Iowa. These locations treat more than half a million people each year. To obtain the latest news releases from Mayo Clinic, go to www.mayoclinic.org/news. For information about research and education, visit www.mayo.edu. MayoClinic.com (www.mayoclinic.com) is available as a resource for your health stories.