Hospital Quality Study Finds
Beebe Medical Center in Top 5%
in Nation for 3rd Consecutive Year™
HealthGrades® Distinction is Based on Outstanding Patient Outcomes Across 26 Medical Procedures and Diagnoses
Beebe Medical Center announced today that HealthGrades, the nation’s most trusted source of health care provider information, has named it a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence™. This prestigious distinction places Beebe Medical Center among the top 5% of hospitals nationwide for clinical performance for the 3rd consecutive year.
HealthGrades Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence study, released today, objectively identifies those hospitals with the best overall clinical performance across 26 medical diagnoses and procedures that the organization rates. These 263 top-performing hospitals represent only 5% of the nation’s hospitals and each is designated as a HealthGrades Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence™.
Earlier this year, HealthGrades named Beebe Medical Center one of America’s 100 Best Hospitals for Orthopedics, Joint Replacement, and Spine Surgery for 2012. Beebe was named best on all of the Delmarva Peninsula for Orthopedics, Joint Replacement and Spine Surgery. It also gave Beebe’s interventional cardiology program a 5-star rating for coronary interventional procedures (stents, angioplasty), and rated the program as #1 in Delaware for coronary interventional procedures, based upon clinical outcomes from 2008 to 2010.
Beebe patient Holland Franks talks with nurses Joanna Robertson and Michele Robertson. He participates in the Bedside Reporting initiative to improve the quality of patient care.
"Beebe Medical Center can be proud of the contributions of its physicians, nurses and staff in achieving outstanding patient care," said Kristin Reed, HealthGrades vice president of hospital ratings and author of the study. "The Delmarva community is fortunate to have access to some of the highest quality hospital care in the nation."
“This outstanding achievement, attained now for three years in a row, is a credit to everyone at Beebe Medical Center,” said Jeffrey M. Fried, President and CEO of Beebe Medical Center. “It reflects the commitment to quality and safety in patient care of our Board members, our physicians, our clinical staff and all of our employees.
Anesthesiologist Thomas Kelly, MD, and Mimi Hernandez, RN, meet with a Same Day Surgery patient before surgery to make sure all information is in order.
“The award recognizes the attention to detail and to continuously improving processes that have made our clinical outcomes among the best in the nation. We take great pride in our collective efforts to continually identify opportunities for improvement, and for focusing on quality and on producing excellent results and outcomes for our patients.”
The HealthGrades study found that:
Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence (Top 5% in the nation), such as Beebe Medical Center, outperformed all other hospitals across all of the 17 mortality cohorts and six of nine complication cohorts studied from 2008 through 2010.
Specifically, Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence had a 30.07% lower risk-adjusted mortality rate and a 1.86% lower risk-adjusted inhospital complication rate among Medicare beneficiaries compared to all other hospitals.
In fact, if all hospitals performed at the level of Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence, 165,704 Medicare lives could potentially have been saved and 6,800 Medicare inhospital complications could potentially have been avoided.
Beebe Medical Center Ranked #1 in Delaware for Coronary Interventional Procedures - 2 Years In a Row
Beebe Medical Center's Interventional Cardiology program, based upon clinical results over the past four years, rocketed to becoming the highest-ranked program in Delaware, according to Healthgrades, a leading independent healthcare ratings organization.
HealthGrades Names Beebe Medical Center Recipient of the Coronary Intervention Excellence Award™ for 2012
Beebe Medical Center Ranked Among the Top 5% In the Nation for Coronary Interventional Procedures in 2012
Beebe Medical Center ranked #1 in Delaware for Coronary Interventional Procedures for 2 Years in a Row (2011-2012)
5-Star rated for Coronary Interventional Procedures for 2 Years in a Row (2011-2012)
Peggy Parsons, CVT (left), and Nicole Fisher, RN, prep the Cath Lab for a cardiac catheterization procedure. HealthGrades® has rated Beebe Medical Center #1 in Delaware for Coronary Interventional Procedures two years in a row (2011–2012).
Beebe Medical Center's interventional cardiology program, for the second year in a row, has become the highest ranked program in Delaware, according to Healthgrades, a leading independent healthcare ratings organization.
Healthgrades, in its 2012 rankings, gave Beebe's interventional cardiology program a 5-star rating for coronary interventional procedures (stents, angioplasty), and rated the program as #1 in Delaware for coronary interventional procedures, based upon clinical outcomes from 2008 to 2010.
HealthGrades also named Beebe Medical Center Recipient of the Coronary Intervention Excellence Award" for 2012 -- an impressive attainment for a coronary interventions program that started only four years ago.
The meticulous hard work and success of the program has become evident with its recognition by Healthgrades. Beebe Medical Center's 5-star rating recognizes the expertise, compassion, and dedication of interventional cardiologists Drs. Ehtasham Qureshi, Mouhanad Freih, and Robert Myers.
Beebe Medical Center's Interventional Cardiology program is a comprehensive collaboration between the Emergency Department, dedicated cardiac catheterization laboratory nurses and staff, the Intensive Care Unit and dedicated cardiac units, as well as an expert team of interventional cardiologists. There is full-time availability of cardiothoracic surgery for higher-risk patients as well as an accredited Cardiac Rehabilitation program.
HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings organization, ranks Beebe Medical Center as #1 in Delaware for Overall Orthopedics and Best in the Delmarva Peninsula for Overall Orthopedics in a study released today.
HealthGrades has ranked Beebe Medical Center #1 in Delaware for Overall Orthopedics and Best in the Delmarva Peninsula for Overall Orthopedics for 6 years in a row — 2007 to 2012.
Beebe Medical Center received 5-star ratings for:
Overall Orthopedics
Joint Replacement
Spine Surgery
Total Knee Replacement
Total Hip Replacement
Hip Fracture Treatment
Back & Neck Surgery
Spinal Fusion Surgery
The nation's nearly 5,000 hospitals were all included in this sweeping study, which examined mortality rates and complication rates from government data from 2008, 2009, and 2010. The Fourteenth AnnualHealthGrades Hospital Quality in America study, the largest annual report of its kind, analyzed patient outcomes from nearly 40 million Medicare hospitalization records over a three-year period.
Beebe Medical Center offers a comprehensive orthopedic program that includes pre-surgery education classes for patients undergoing joint replacement and physical therapy programs following surgery. The Orthopaedic Department also offers education for patients undergoing spinal surgery. In recent years the spinal surgery program has grown as surgeons perform innovative and minimally invasive spinal surgeries.
The hospital has a dedicated unit on the third floor with 29 patient rooms for orthopedic surgery patients that is staffed by healthcare professionals who are specially trained and educated in the care of orthopedic patients. These professionals use the latest in healthcare technologies to ensure optimum patient recovery. The unit also has a dedicated wing for joint replacement patients.
Tunnell Cancer Center Earns National Recognition for Quality
The Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of Surgeons has granted a Three-Year Accreditation with Commendation to the Tunnell Cancer Center at Beebe Medical Center. This is the third time that Tunnell Cancer Center has gained the coveted Commendation designation as part of the Certificate of Accreditation, although Tunnell Cancer Center has consistently received accreditation from the Commission on Cancer.
Beebe Medical Center Recognized By the Premier Healthcare Alliance for High-Quality Patient Care, Operational Efficiency
Beebe Medical Center is one of 21 hospitals and three health systems of the 3,788 eligible hospitals and 346 health systems nationwide — the top 1% — that have been recognized with this Premier Award.
The award recognizes leading healthcare organizations that efficiently provide outstanding patient care and consistently set the standard in clinical excellence. The AFQ's performance-based criteria — including clinical quality outcomes, resource utilization, and clinical process indicators — measures top performers at the overall hospital level.
"This recognition is a credit to everyone at Beebe Medical Center," says Jeffrey M. Fried, FACHE, President/CEO of Beebe Medical Center. "It reflects the commitment and dedication of our Board, our physicians, our clinical staff, and all employees who work to continually improve the quality and safety of the care that we bring to our community.
"The award recognizes the attention to detail that has made our clinical outcomes among the best in the nation," he continues. "We have established protocols following best-practice guidelines to maintain high quality standards. For example, we participate in the Surgical Care Improvement Project, a national quality improvement program aimed at significantly reducing surgical complications. We use feedback from this program and the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program to monitor our outcomes and identify opportunities for improvement. We also have initiated strict infection prevention protocols and best-practice measures to improve the care and treatment of patients with pneumonia, heart failure, and heart attack."
Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,300 U.S. hospitals and 67,000-plus other healthcare sites working together to achieve high-quality, cost-effective care. Owned by not-for-profit hospitals, Premier maintains the nation's most comprehensive repository of clinical, financial, and outcomes information and operates a leading healthcare purchasing network. A world leader in helping deliver measurable improvements in care, Premier works with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the United Kingdom's National Health Service North West to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Premier also has offices in San Diego, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. www.premierinc.com
Tunnell Cancer Center Earns National Achievement Award
Beebe Medical Center's Tunnell Cancer Center has been named a recipient of the 2008 Commission on Cancer Outstanding Achievement Award for excellence. Tunnell Cancer Center is one of only 95 cancer programs across the nation, and the only one in Delaware, to earn this prestigious award from the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC).
The CoC Outstanding achievement award recognizes the significant commitment by the medical staff, administration, and personnel for providing high-quality cancer care and meeting and exceeding the standards set by the CoC Approvals Program, stated Stephen B. Edge, MD, FACS, CoC Chairman. Tunnell Cancer Center not only met the basic standards of the accreditation program, but excelled in seven areas where Commendation has been awarded.
Earlier in 2009, the Commission granted Tunnell Cancer Center a Three-Year Approval with Commendation. It was the second time in a row that Tunnell Cancer Center has gained the coveted Commendation designation, although Tunnell Cancer Center has consistently received approval from the Commission. Read full news release. >
Quality Insights of Delaware Honors Beebe
Quality Insights of Delaware, the state's Medicare
quality improvement organization, honored Beebe Medical
Center and Beebe Home Health for outstanding performance in improving the quality of care. Beebe Medical Center
received two Golden Apple awards. The Golden Apple Award for
Quality Leadership was for Beebe Medical Center's progress towards
implementing a closed-loop bar-coding system for medication administration. In this system, the wristbands worn by patients in the hospital will
include bar codes with the patient's demographic information that work
in concert with computerized medication information. This system ensures
that medications being given throughout the patient's hospital stay are the
correct ones.
Beebe Medical Center also earned the Quality Partner Golden Apple
Award for outreach efforts to help community physicians implement electronic
health records. Beebe Medical Center has developed a strategic
communication effort to help physicians work together with the medical
center to develop and implement an electronic medical record system that
will connect physicians' offices with the medical center's records.
Beebe Home Health was recognized with a Quality Associate Award
for participation in healthcare quality improvement activities. These activities
included reducing inpatient re-hospitalization, improving ambulation,
managing pain that interferes with activity, and improving the culture of
the organization. Beebe Home Health collaborated with
Quality Insights of Delaware and implemented multiple
best practices to improve the quality of care.
Delaware Quality Award
Beebe Medical Center received the 2006 W.L. (Bill) Gore Award for Excellence, a distinction based on the Malcolm Baldrige Award Criteria. The recognition honors organizations that excel in leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, management, and results.
In presenting the award, the governor called Beebe a "most esteemed leader" in the state's medical and business community and noted that Beebe is the first hospital in
Delaware to win the award.
Featured Links
Beebe is 2012 recipient of the Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical Excellence™ by HealthGrades®.
Learn more >
Beebe’s 2010 Annual Report on Quality and Safety Download >
Anesthesiologist Thomas Kelly, MD, and Mimi Hernandez, RN, meet with a Same Day Surgery patient before surgery to make sure all information is in order.
HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings organization, ranks Beebe Medical Center as #1 in Delaware for Overall Orthopedics and Best in the Delmarva Peninsula for Overall Orthopedics in a study released today.
The Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of Surgeons has granted a Three-Year Accreditation with Commendation to the Tunnell Cancer Center at Beebe Medical Center. This is the third time that Tunnell Cancer Center has gained the coveted Commendation designation as part of the Certificate of Accreditation, although Tunnell Cancer Center has consistently received accreditation from the Commission on Cancer.
Beebe Medical Center is one of 21 hospitals and three health systems of the 3,788 eligible hospitals and 346 health systems nationwide — the top 1% — that have been recognized with this Premier Award.
Beebe Medical Center's Tunnell Cancer Center has been named a recipient of the 2008 Commission on Cancer Outstanding Achievement Award for excellence. Tunnell Cancer Center is one of only 95 cancer programs across the nation, and the only one in Delaware, to earn this prestigious award from the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC). 
Quality Insights of Delaware, the state's Medicare
quality improvement organization, honored Beebe Medical
Center and Beebe Home Health for outstanding performance in improving the quality of care. Beebe Medical Center
received two Golden Apple awards. The Golden Apple Award for
Quality Leadership was for Beebe Medical Center's progress towards
implementing a closed-loop bar-coding system for medication administration. In this system, the wristbands worn by patients in the hospital will
include bar codes with the patient's demographic information that work
in concert with computerized medication information. This system ensures
that medications being given throughout the patient's hospital stay are the
correct ones.
