VHA Inc. Announces Winners of 2014 Excellence Awards for Clinical Care

IRVING, Texas, April 28, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- VHA Inc., the national health care network, today announced the presentation of its 2014 Excellence Awards to 11 member hospitals for achieving exceptionally high levels of performance in clinical care when compared to national benchmarks. The awards were presented on Sunday, April 27 during VHA's Navigating to Excellence Forum in Las Vegas.

"Hospitals today must be focused on improving clinical outcomes and making operations more cost effective, while also improving the patient's experience," said Byron Jobe, VHA executive vice president, service and delivery. "The Navigating to Excellence Forum is VHA's annual member conference and is designed to bring health care delivery experts and leading health care systems together to share best practices and learn about innovative solutions to improve clinical quality and performance."

To determine the winners of their Clinical Care Award, VHA used cost, length of stay, readmission and clinical outcome data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to establish an integrated performance score for each of its member hospitals. In addition to scoring above the 90th percentile, as compared to other VHA members, the hospital must also have participated in a VHA improvement program in 2013. The winners were:

Acute care hospital, bed size less than 250

• Fort Loudoun Medical Center in Lenoir City, TN
• MCHS in Eau Claire in Eau Claire, WI
• Memorial Hospital and Health Center in Jasper, IN
• Penn Highlands DuBois in DuBois, PA

Acute care hospital, bed size greater than 250

• Boca Raton Regional Hospital in Boca Raton, FL
• Boone Hospital Center in Columbia, MO
• Decatur Memorial Hospital in Decatur, IL
• Northeast Georgia Health System in Gainsville, GA
• Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, OR
• Stormont-Vail HealthCare in Topeka, KS
• Sanford Health Medical Center Fargo in Fargo, ND

"By recognizing institutions for their commitment and achievements, VHA hopes that other health systems will apply these leading practices in their own organizations to further enhance the overall level of quality in our nation's health care system," said Jobe.

VHA's Navigating to Excellence Forum is being held April 27-29 and will offer more than 35 educational sessions hosted by thought-leaders from hospitals, healthcare systems and research and policy organizations from across the country as well as VHA subject matter experts.

About VHA
VHA Inc. is a national network of not-for-profit health care organizations working together to improve performance and efficiency in clinical, financial and operational management. Since 1977, when VHA established the first hospital membership organization, the company has applied its knowledge in analytics, contracting, consulting and network development to help members and customers achieve their strategic objectives. In 2012, VHA delivered $1.9 billion in savings and additional value to members. Serving 5,100 health system members and affiliates, VHA represents more than a quarter of the nation's hospitals. VHA also serves more than 118,000 non-acute health care customers enterprise-wide. VHA is based in Irving, Texas, and has 12 regional offices across the U.S. VHA, together with UHC, owns Novation, a supply chain company, and its subsidiary aptitude™ , the health care industry's first online direct market for contracting. VHA also owns Provista, a supply chain company serving the non-acute market as well as hospitality, education, corporate and government markets. For more information, visit www.vha.com and follow us on Twitter (@VHAInc).

SOURCE VHA Inc.