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News — For the 10th year in a row, RUSH has been named one of the highest-quality hospitals in the nation by Vizient, the nation’s leading health care performance improvement company.

Vizient’s Quality and Accountability Study — the only hospital rating system that relies solely on patient outcome data for all inpatients — ranks RUSH University Medical Center No. 2 in the country and as the only Illinois academic medical center in the top 10. RUSH has been in the Vizient top five for 10 consecutive years.

“This top national ranking from Vizient validates what our patients have long recognized — the care provided at RUSH is consistently among the nation’s finest,” said Dr. Omar Lateef, president and CEO of RUSH. “I take immense pride in our dedicated RUSH team, which remains unwavering in its commitment to enhancing the quality of care for patients.”

The Vizient study of nearly 800 hospitals — which also includes separately ranked community hospitals and smaller academic medical centers — evaluates hospitals’ performance based on the Institute of Medicine’s six domains of care: safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, equity and patient centeredness.

Quality 'encompasses everything that should go right during a hospital stay'

While RUSH consistently ranks among the top performers in every major hospital rating system, being among the best in the Vizient Quality and Accountability ranking is one of the most respected gauges of quality and safety.

“Quality encompasses everything that should go right during a hospital stay,” said Dr. Brian Stein, the medical center’s chief quality officer. “Because Vizient measures performance at hospitals across the country, every day thousands of RUSH employees know with confidence that their work contributes to RUSH’s outstanding performance — one patient at a time.”

Here’s how this measure is different from others:

• Vizient does not factor in reputation. While other rankings rely heavily on opinion surveys, Vizient’s study is entirely based on data.
• The rating uses current data. Scores reflect care provided from June 2022 to June 2023, while other rankings or ratings typically rely on claims data that can be 18 to 24 months old.
• It encompasses all patients. This study compares outcomes for all inpatients regardless of insurance.
• The ranking compares similarly sized hospitals. Vizient groups hospitals by four subtypes, so large academic medical centers like RUSH are compared with hospitals that have similar volumes and perform a similar range of procedures.
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As the country’s largest member-owned health care services company, Vizient helps participating hospitals and health systems benchmark performance against their peers. More than 1,000 hospital facilities feed data directly from electronic medical records to a data analytics platform hospitals use to identify and accelerate ways to improve patient care.

Unlike other ranking systems that rely on reputation surveys and old or incomplete data, Vizient’s Quality and Accountability Study is based entirely on de-identified patient outcome data hospitals provide several times each year directly from electronic medical records for all inpatients — regardless of insurance coverage.

Patients deserve ratings that are timely, objective and relevant

While Vizient has conducted the Quality and Accountability Study every year since 2005, this year’s release comes as other hospital rating systems have received increased scrutiny for their objectivity, complexity and relevance.

Stein notes that while there is greater awareness of health care options, evidence suggests they are relying less on existing rating systems to inform their choices.

“Patients and providers deserve quality rating systems that are easy to understand, use contemporary data, and measure outcomes that will drive real improvement and that will recognize the great clinical work that is delivered every day to the diverse communities they serve,” he said.