St. Luke's Named Among Top 15 Health Systems Nationwide
Network Also Achieves Multiple 100-Top-Hospital Designations, including #1 Major Teaching Hospital in the Country.
BETHLEHEM, Pa., April 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- St. Luke's University Health Network is a first-time winner of the prestigious 2021 15 Top Health Systems award, part of the Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals national benchmarks series. St. Luke's is the only health system in the Lehigh Valley to receive this honor – and one of only two health systems in Pennsylvania.
IBM Watson Health has identified the top health systems in the United States through a rigorous, objective evaluation of 324 health systems with multiple hospitals. The annual top health system list, published Monday by Fortune, was established in 2009 to identify top performance in, among other measures, clinical outcomes, patient experience and operational efficiency through effective system integration.
For the first time, this year's ranking also introduces a measure of hospitals' contributions to community health with a focus on equity, developed by a team of experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity and the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"Hospitals save lives both by caring for individuals who are sick and by working to keep their communities healthy," said Joshua M. Sharfstein, MD, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement and Director of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Many health care "systems" in this country do not operate as actual systems; rather, their various components – hospitals, service lines, practices, information technology, electronic medical records, human resources, etc. – largely operate independently, explained St. Luke's President and CEO Rick Anderson. In contrast, St. Luke's success is a direct result of a legitimate, thorough integration, providing patients with a seamless and consistent patient and clinical experience in all of the Network's 12 hospitals and more than 300 outpatient locations.
"The IBM Watson 15 Top Health System award recognizes St. Luke's University Health Network's ability to provide fully integrated services and the highest level of quality care at a lower cost than any hospital network in our region. This recognition is especially significant at this time, considering the vital and fundamental role of health systems in the battle against COVID-19," Anderson said.
In addition to the 15 Top Health Systems recognition, individual St. Luke's campuses won IBM Watson Health 100 Top Hospital awards for the ninth time:
- St. Luke's University Hospital, Bethlehem and Allentown campuses, for the seventh time in a row and the ninth time overall in the Major Teaching Hospital category. THIS YEAR ST. LUKE'S UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL WAS RANKED #1 IN THE COUNTRY IN THE MAJOR TEACHING HOSPITAL CATEGORY – #1 IN THE COUNTRY!
- St. Luke's Anderson Campus in Bethlehem Township for the third time in a row in the Medium Community Hospital category.
- St. Luke's Miners Campus in Schuylkill County for the first time in the Small Community Hospital category.
IBM Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals, conducted annually since 1993, is one of the health industry's most prestigious honors. Researchers evaluated 2,675 short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals based on the following public data sets: Medicare cost reports, Medicare Provider Analysis and Review data, and data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital Compare website.
For more information, visit http://www.100tophospitals.com/.
SOURCE St. Luke's University Health Network
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