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Press Release January 26, 2007 EMPATH Client is Top Performer in Medicare Project Spokane, Wash. — Sacred Heart Medical Center has been named one of the top five performers in a nationwide groundbreaking Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) / Premier Inc. project. As part of the pay-for-performance project, CMS awarded incentive payments of $8.7MM to 115 top-performing hospitals for delivering higher quality care in five clinical areas. Launched in 2004, the CMS / Premier Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration helps participating hospitals improve the quality of care in treating acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), heart failure, coronary artery bypass graft, pneumonia, and hip and knee replacement. "Sacred Heart has sustained its improvements since the program's first-year review, and now has been rated in the top 10 percent for treatment of heart attack and heart failure and in the top 20 percent for treatment of patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery," says Denise Dominik, the Medical Center's director of Performance Improvement. As a result of these top-quality results, Sacred Heart will receive a bonus payment of more than $256,000—the fifth highest amount awarded to any hospital. Approximately 265 hospitals, which contract with Premier Inc. for quality-related programs such as its national database benchmarking system, are participating in the project with CMS. All five participating hospitals in Washington state are members of Providence Health & Services. "The CMS project is becoming the best measure of performance in the health care industry because it provides a consistent definition of key measurements of quality and audits hospitals' reported data for accuracy," explains Jeff Collins, MD, chief medical officer at Sacred Heart. He continues, "Sacred Heart is truly setting the pace for the highest quality, safest patient care, and we're proud of our outstanding staff and physicians who focus on continuous improvement." "We were pleased to participate in this demonstration and are proud that our performance was rated among the best," says Michael Wilson, president of Sacred Heart. "It is reflective of our commitment to providing top-quality care for every patient, every time-both as it relates to patient satisfaction and from the standpoint of its impact on health care costs." For complete information about the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration project, visit www.premierinc.com/qualitydemo. Also see "Bonus Pay by Medicare Lifts Quality" in the New York Times, Jan. 25, 2007. About Premier Inc.: Serving 1,700 hospitals and 42,000 other health care sites, Premier Inc. is the largest health care alliance in the United States dedicated to improving patient outcomes while safely reducing the cost of care. Headquartered in San Diego, Premier is the recipient of the 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Visit www.premierinc.com. About Sacred Heart Medical Center & Children's Hospital: With 623 beds, Sacred Heart is one of the largest hospitals in the Northwest. It employs over 4,000 health care professionals and support staff. Its medical staff provides the expertise and skills of over 800 specialists and primary care doctors. In addition to a full-service Children's Hospital, Sacred Heart features comprehensive cardiac programs, a certified Stroke Center, Level II Trauma Center and neuroscience, psychiatric, continence and cancer services, among others. Visit www.shmc.org. — — — EMPATH has served more than seventy hospitals and healthcare systems nationwide since 1996. Expert in change management, the company creates solutions for hospital and ED overcrowding, bed capacity and availability, ambulance diversion, and patient satisfaction. The company identifies, assesses, benchmarks and redesigns the processes and systems that serve patients as they move throughout the ED and inpatient areas during their hospital stay. EMPATH's corporate headquarters is at: 1160 Brickyard Cove Road, Suite 110, Point Richmond, CA 94801. EMPATH can be reached at 888.4EMPATH, 510.215.6220, Or via email at  |
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