Penrose-St. Francis named one of nation's 50 best hospitals

For the fourth straight year, Penrose-St. Francis Health Services on Wednesday was named one of America’s 50 Best Hospitals by the ratings group HealthGrades.

Penrose-St. Francis chief operating officer Jamie Smith said the honor means a lot to the hospital, but it’s not something the organization specifically shoots for.

“We don’t have HealthGrades rankings as a goal, it’s just an outcome that comes from what we do every day,” Smith said. “It’s really a matter of having policies, procedures and people that end up achieving these outcomes on a continual basis.”

HealthGrades, an independent health care ratings organization, looks at 26 common procedures and diagnoses, then determines which hospitals perform the best in terms of patient deaths and major complications. The best 5 percent among the nation’s 5,000 nonfederal hospitals are then judged based on which institutions have been consistently good and the top 1 percent make the list. Penrose-St. Francis, which includes both Penrose Main and St. Francis Medical Center, was the only hospital in Colorado to make the list.

The HealthGrades score helps Penrose-St. Francis establish an image of quality and a regional brand with potential patients, Smith said.

“Going to the Cleveland Clinic or going to Mayo, or going to Denver for that matter, isn’t going to mean better care,” he said. “We really have a focus on being a referral center for southern Colorado.”

It’s also a boon for recruitment and retention, Smith said.

“Pride in what you do and pride in who you work for is probably one of the greatest retention tools you can have,” Smith said.

HealthGrades said patients at its top hospitals had a 28.6-percent lower risk of death and a 3.5-percent lower rate of complications than at an average hospital and that, if all hospitals achieved the quality of care as its top 50, 550,000 Medicare deaths could have been prevented between 1999 and 2010.

“As our nation searches for a solution to providing Americans’ with access to high quality health care at an affordable price, these hospitals are setting the standard, demonstrating that consistent, sustainable clinical excellence is achievable,” said Dr. Rick May, HealthGrades’ vice president of clinical quality services, in a statement.