National Quality and Safety Study Ranks Rush University Medical Center Among Top Performing Academic Medical Centers in the CountryOctober 24, 2014

Newswise — (CHICAGO) — Rush University Medical Center has received the UHC’s (University HealthSystem Consortium) Quality Leadership Award, ranking fifth among 104 academic medical centers in the UHC’s annual study. Rush is the only medical center in Illinois to be listed among the 12 top ranking medical centers.

This year marks the seventh time since the UHC Quality and Accountability Study was begun in 2005 that Rush has been ranked in the study’s top ranking medical centers.Medical centers that demonstrated excellence in delivering high-quality care in the study received the Quality Leadership Award. The 2014 study evaluated 104 of the UHC’s principal member hospitals on the basis of mortality, effectiveness, safety, patient centeredness and equity of care. Rush attained a perfect score in the equity of care category, which means that the results of Rush patients’ care do not vary due to differences in patients’ gender, race or socioeconomic status, in every year that that the study has been conducted.

The results of the study were announced at the UHC’s annual conference, which is being held in Las Vegas. Based in Chicago, the UHC is an alliance of 117 academic medical centers and 310 of their affiliated hospitals representing the nation’s leading academic medical centers.

The study examined data provided by member hospitals through the UHC’s comparative Clinical Data Base and Core Measures database. In addition, the study reviewed source data from the publicly reported Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Unlike other reviews of hospitals that take reputation into account, the UHC study is based entirely on objective data related to patient outcomes. The purpose of the annual study, according to the UHC, is to determine what structures and practices contribute to high levels of quality and safety across a wide variety of patient populations at academic medical centers. “Patients look to academic medical centers to provide advanced, innovative care, so it is an especially great honor that the UHC again has ranked Rush as a high-performing organization,” says Larry J. Goodman, MD, Rush CEO. “Our performance on the UHC study reflects the skill, dedication and collaboration of everyone at Rush, and I commend you on receiving this well-deserved honor.”

About RushRush (http://www.rush.edu) is a not-for-profit academic medical center comprising Rush University Medical Center, Rush University, Rush Oak Park Hospital and Rush Health.