Leading Hospitals Honored for Quality, Efficiency by The Advisory Board Company

WASHINGTON, April 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Advisory Board Company's CRIMSON Initiative® will present the 2010 CRIMSON Physician Partnership Award for Delivering Value through Clinical Collaboration to Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, an affiliate of Sutter Health, and Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare. The presentation will take place on April 15 at the CRIMSON Annual Performance Summit at the University of Texas, Austin.

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Alta Bates Summit Medical Center (Berkley and Oakland, CA) and Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare (Louisville, KY) are the first recipients of the annual award presented to administrator-physician leadership teams of CRIMSON Initiative® member organizations. The Award recognizes hospitals and their physicians who have effectively collaborated to improve clinical outcomes while delivering care at lower costs, and benefiting patients and the larger community. 

"These institutions brought administrators and physicians together to collect and analyze performance data, improving mortality rates and reducing complications in the process, while also cutting waste and inefficiency," said Richard Schwartz, Executive Vice President of The Advisory Board Company. "As health care reform has made evident, our nation will continue to struggle with controlling growth in health costs. We commend these hospitals' successful efforts to collaborate with physicians – whose decisions play a critical role in health care spending – to deliver more efficient hospital care without compromising their commitment to patients."

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center is being recognized for engaging hospitalists institution-wide to reduce mortality rates and hospital readmissions, while reducing the number of days patients spend in the hospital.  Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare is being lauded for exceptional collaboration between administrators and its Cardiovascular Surgery Team, ensuring care consistent with industry-recognized clinical best practices 100 percent of the time.  At the same time, Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare shortened patients' hospital stays, reducing the likelihood of hospital-acquired infection.  The 2010 CRIMSON Physician Partnership Award for Delivering Value through Clinical Collaboration recognizes these achievements and the use of CRIMSON Initiative® solutions to achieve such gains.

For more information on the 2010 CRIMSON Physician Partnership Award for Delivering Value through Clinical Collaboration, visit http://crimsonservices.com/partnershipaward.html.

About The CRIMSON Initiative®

The first performance management platform developed by physicians for physicians, The Advisory Board Company's CRIMSON Initiative® helps members advance quality goals and secure total cost savings measured in millions of dollars. The CRIMSON Initiative's web-based solutions, which combine business intelligence technology with best practice implementation, now supports more than 270 individual hospitals representing more than 25,000 physician users, demonstrating that sharing timely and rigorous performance data with physicians can yield significant cost savings and quality gains.  To learn more about CRIMSON Initiative® solutions, visit http://www.crimsonservices.com.

About The Advisory Board Company

The Advisory Board Company is a leading provider of comprehensive performance improvement services to the health care and education sectors -- including operational best practices and insights, technology solutions, leadership development, and consulting and management support. Drawing on nearly three decades of experience, The Advisory Board Company is privileged to serve a membership of more than 2,800 organizations, all sharing a charter "above commerce," a commitment to best-practice standards, and an unyielding insistence on continual improvement. For more information visit http://www.advisoryboardcompany.com.

About Alta Bates Summit Medical Center:

With more than 100 years of commitment to the communities it serves, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center is the East Bay's largest private, not-for-profit medical center.  With over 1,000 beds, 5,000 employees and 1,000 physicians, this multi-campus regional, tertiary care medical center includes Samuel Merritt University and the Alta Bates Summit Foundation.  Alta Bates Summit Medical Center is honored as one of the foremost hospitals in the country for clinical excellence, quality outcomes and patient safety.  Nationally recognized services include:  Regional Stroke Center, Regional Rehabilitation Center, and Chemical Dependency, with Centers of Excellence in Women and Infants (including a Level III Newborn ICU), Cardiovascular, Orthopedics, Oncology, and Behavioral Health. 

Located in the heart of the San Francisco East Bay Area, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center is part of Sutter Health, one of the nation's leading not-for-profit networks of community health services.   For more information about Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, visit their website at www.altabatessummit.org.

About Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's Health Care:

Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare (JHSMH) is a regional health network that includes more than 70 health care facilities and 1,900 patient beds in Kentucky and southern Indiana.  JHSMH provides a complete array of health care services including hospitals, outpatient care, occupational health, psychiatric care and rehab medicine. JHSMH also provides innovative home health care and specialty programs promoting the highest quality of life to families in Kentucky and southern Indiana and has been nationally ranked in the top 25 percent of Medicare-certified agency providers. JHSMH has nearly 7,850 team members and employs a network of physician practices that provide both primary and specialty medical care. For more information about Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare, visit their website at www.jhsmh.org.

SOURCE The Advisory Board Company