UK HealthCare Among Nation’s Best

Performance at University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital Among Nation's Best

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 4, 2006) - University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital has been ranked among the top 15 academic medical centers in the nation for having faster and more consistent organization-wide improvement than most other teaching hospitals during the past five consecutive years. It is the only academic medical center in Kentucky to make the list.

Solucient, an organization that has been identifying America's top performing hospitals since 1993 and is well-known among the health care industry, determined UK to be among the top 15 major teaching hospitals in the nation, and the top 100 among all hospitals.

"To receive national recognition for what we have been working to achieve is a real vote of confidence for the UK HealthCare team," said Dr. Michael Karpf, UK Executive Vice President for Health Affairs. "We are committed to providing the highest quality of advanced subspecialty care for our patients. The citizens of Kentucky deserve to have access to that kind of care right here in the region. Our long-term faculty and those we have recruited are helping us provide this level of care."

The hospitals on the list made the greatest progress in improving hospital-wide performance over five years (2000-2004), and set national benchmarks for consistent improvement in clinical outcomes, safety, hospital efficiency, financial stability and growth.

Current UK HealthCare initiatives related to performance improvement include:

A program in Quality, Safety and Patient Rights that faculty say could lead to health care improvements across the nation. The program is designed to bring an academic component to UK HealthCare's efforts to provide the highest quality, safest and most efficient health care through the implementation of process improvement techniques.

The current hospital structure will soon be replaced by a new $450 million patient care facility that will provide the kind of space the university needs to deliver the most cutting-edge health care. It is estimated to be the largest construction project in Kentucky. Construction work already has begun on a new patient parking garage. Work on the hospital will begin in 2007 and be completed in 2010.

Since 2003, nearly 1,000 new jobs have been created at the hospital, Kentucky Clinic and UK's medical colleges. This 20 percent increase in the workforce is necessary to serve the 26 percent increase in patients coming to UK HealthCare.

UK was among the first 40 hospitals in the U.S., out of more than 6,000 facilities, to be named a Magnet site for its outstanding nursing care, and was among the first to be granted renewed Magnet site status in October 2005. The recognition is from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, a subsidiary of the American Nurses Association. Studies have shown that Magnet hospitals have lower mortality rates, better patient satisfaction, and more individual attention by nurses, and shorter hospital stays.

"Our Quality, Safety and Patient Rights program makes us a national model for hospitals to follow as we improve outcomes through its implementation," said Dr. Richard Lofgren, UK HealthCare Chief Medical Officer. "Our early efforts in process improvement and 'lean management,' a business process pioneered at Toyota Motor Manufacturing which emphasizes value and quality, has proven that UK's approach is applicable broadly at other health care facilities and would result in cost savings while achieving improved health outcomes for our patients."

The study examined all U.S. hospitals licensed to treat Medicare patients. Nine performance measures were examined at each hospital: risk-adjusted mortality and complications, average length of stay, expenses, profitability, cash-to-debt ratio, growth in patient volume, tangible assets and risk-adjusted patient safety index. The study used publicly available Medicare cost reports, MedPAR data and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services outpatient data from 2000 to 2004.

"Five years of steady, well-aligned improvement means that these 100 Performance Improvement (PI) Leaders have enormously increased the value they provide to their communities," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president, performance improvement & 100 Top programs, Center for Healthcare Improvement at Solucient.

To receive a copy of the UK HealthCare 2005 annual report call (859) 257-1000 or toll free (800) 333-8874.

In striving to become a Top 20 public research institution, the University of Kentucky is a catalyst for a new Commonwealth - a Kentucky that is healthier, better educated, and positioned to compete in a global and changing economy. For more information about UK's efforts to become a Top 20 university, please go to http://www.uky.edu/OPBPA/Top20.html.