PH DUBOIS NAMED AMONG THE BEST IN HEART FAILURE TREATMENTS Penn Highlands DuBois has been recognized as one of the best hospitals for 2015-16 in the treatment of Heart Failure by U.S. News & World Report. The annual U.S. News Best Hospitals rankings, now in its 26th year, recognize hospitals that excel in treating the most challenging patients. “We are extremely proud of The Heart Center, our employees and the medical staff,” John Sutika, president of PH DuBois, said. “We are here to do the best we can for our patients, and this shows that we are doing just that.” For 2015-16, U.S. News evaluated hospitals in 16 adult specialties and ranked the top 50 in most of the specialties. Less than 3 percent of the nearly 5,000 hospitals that were analyzed for Best Hospitals 2015-16 were nationally ranked in even one specialty. “A Best Hospital has demonstrated expertise in treating the most challenging patients,” said Ben Harder, chief of health analysis at U.S. News. “A hospital that emerged from our analysis as one of the best has much to be proud of.” U.S. News publishes Best Hospitals to help guide patients who need a high level of care because they face particularly difficult surgery, a challenging condition or extra risk because of age or multiple health problems. Objective measures such as patient survival and safety data, adequacy of nurse staffing and other data largely determined the rankings in most specialties. The specialty rankings and data were produced for U.S. News by RTI International, a leading research organization based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. U.S. News used the same data, as well as the new Best Hospitals for Common Care
also recognized as a “Benchmark Hospital” for a second time, meaning it exceeded performance standards when compared with other hospitals in the Highmark network. ratings, first published in May, to produce the state and metro rankings. The rankings are freely available at http:// health.usnews.com/best-hospitals and appear in the U.S. News “Best Hospitals 2016” guidebook.
PH CLEARFIELD RECOGNIZED BY HIGHMARK FOR PROVIDING SAFE, HIGH QUALITY PATIENT CARE For the fifth year in a row, Penn Highlands Clearfield has been recognized by Highmark for providing safe, high quality patient care.
Specifically, Penn Highlands Clearfield was one of only three hospitals to be recognized as a best practice hospital for its efforts on the reduction of patients needing to return to the Emergency Department within seven days of discharge, as well as readmissions three and 30 days after discharge. “Safe patient care is of paramount importance. On behalf of hospital administration and the board of directors, we congratulate our medical and hospital staffs for their exceptional work in achieving maximum results in Highmark’s QualityBLUE program,” stated Gary Macioce, hospital president.
According to Catherine Civiello, PhD, Director of Performance Improvement, the Highmark report scores are reflective of the hard work of all the physicians and hospital’s staff in advancing several initiatives, including participation in Highmark’s QualityBLUE Hospital Pay for Performance Program, which focuses on improving patient care and safety across Highmark’s hospital network. Penn Highlands Clearfield earned “A’s” this year in blood clot prevention, reducing readmissions to the hospital and reducing or eliminating healthcare-acquired Infections in all four areas monitored, surgical site, central line bloodstream, foley catheter and C-Diff infections. Further, Penn Highlands Clearfield was
Laura Sherick, RN, a Penn Highlands Clearfield nurse on the Medical/Telemetry/Surgical/Pediatrics Unit.
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