St. Mary Medical Center was recently named one of the nation’s Top Performers on Key Quality Measures by The Joint Commission, the nation's leading accreditor of healthcare organizations.

The Joint Commission recognized St. Mary for exemplary performance in using evidence-based clinical processes that are shown to improve care for certain conditions, including heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care. St. Mary is among the top 18 percent of hospitals nationwide to earn this distinction for attaining and sustaining excellence in accountability measures.

“We continuously benchmark our quality and service indicators both nationally and regionally to ensure that we continue to provide the highest quality of care and service to our patients, families and community,” said Joseph Conroy, the hospital's vice president and chief medical officer. “We have dedicated significant time, energy and resources over the years to improve our patients’ outcomes and are proud to be named to the list of The Joint Commission’s Top Performers on Key Quality Measures.”

Each of the hospitals that were named as a Top Performer on Key Quality Measures met two 95 percent performance thresholds on 2011 accountability measure data.

First, each hospital achieved performance of 95 percent or above on a single, composite score that includes all the accountability measures for which it reports data to The Joint Commission, including measures that had fewer than 30 eligible cases or patients.

Second, each hospital met or exceeded 95 percent performance on every accountability measure for which it reports data to The Joint Commission, excluding any measures with fewer than 30 eligible cases or patients. A 95 percent score means a hospital provided an evidence-based practice 95 times out of 100 opportunities to provide the practice. Each accountability measure represents an evidence-based practice – for example, giving aspirin at arrival for heart attack patients, or giving antibiotics one hour before surgery.

“When we raise the bar and provide the proper guidance and tools, hospitals have responded with excellent results,” said Mark R. Chassin, Joint Commission president. “This capacity for continual improvement points toward a future in which quality and safety defects are dramatically reduced and high reliability is sought and achieved with regularity. Such day-to-day progress will slowly but surely transform today’s health care system into one that achieves unprecedented performance outcomes for the benefit of the patients.”