Special to 1808Delaware
What does it take to be great? If you ask the leadership team at OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital, it’s all about team. Because of that, the hospital has landed on the IBM Watson Health national list of top hospitals in 8 of 10 years. This year however, despite all of the challenges that COVID-19 presented, Dublin Methodist Hospital was recognized as the number one mid-size hospital in the country.
This year Fortune once again joined forces with IBM Watson Health to rank the very best hospitals and health systems in the country. Crunching the numbers from Medicare cost reports, Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MEDPAR) data, and data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Compare website, IBM researchers evaluated 2,675 short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals on various performance indicators in four main categories: clinical outcomes, operational efficiency, patient experience, and financial health.
And this year, they added a crucial fifth category: how hospitals engaged with the goal of improving the wellbeing of the entire community outside their walls.
This “community health” measure, in large part inspired by the work and passion of Bernard J. Tyson, the legendary CEO of Kaiser Permanente who died in November 2019, signals a radical departure in the way hospitals have long been judged—holding medical centers accountable for their central role in the communities in which they operate. Measuring such involvement isn’t easy—but we think we’ve made a good start in this year’s inaugural effort. IBM Watson Health and Fortune teamed up with researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity and Bloomberg American Health Initiative at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to survey three fundamental components of hospital-community engagement.
“Health is not just limited to what happens within the health care system,” agrees Irene Dankwa-Mullen, Deputy Chief Health Officer and Chief Health Equity Officer at IBM Watson Health. “During the pandemic, we really got to understand how social factors and economic determinants contribute to health and we have so much to learn from what hospitals are already doing in this regard. If anything, the past year has been a call for action to learn even more.”
Top 100 Hospitals have better results on key clinical and operational performance indicators, including:
Survival rates
Patient complications
Healthcare associated infections
30-day mortality rates
30-day hospital-wide readmission rates
Length of stay
Throughput in emergency departments
Inpatient expenses
Profitability
Ratings from patients
“The commitment to our values and our patients, and their ongoing dedication to providing excellent, quality care has earned us this exciting accomplishment,” said Steve Bunyard, President, Dublin Methodist and Grady Memorial Hospital. “National recognition is certainly a great honor, but it’s not what drives these amazing people to do what they do. It’s the passion they have for taking care of our families that sets them apart, and what makes me proud each day.”
OhioHealth Dublin Methodist Hospital and Steve Bunyard were honored by the city of Dublin in a special ceremony Monday, June 14.
