Threepeat for Danbury Hospital

Danbury Hospital has been ranked among the nation”™s top 100 hospitals for the third consecutive year, the only hospital in Fairfield County to receive the National Benchmarks for Success ranking and the only Connecticut hospital named for three consecutive years.

The hospital was ranked by Solucient L.L.C., a nationally recognized health-care rating company that provides comparative measurements of cost, quality and market performance of hospitals around the country. It makes its survey findings public each year.

Solucient said the 100 top hospitals have higher patient survival rates, keep more patients complication-free, and attract more patients while maintaining higher profits. The company said on its Web site that that if all Medicare inpatients in hospitals around the country received the same level of care as those in the top 100 hospitals, more than 100,000 additional patients would survive each year, more than 114,000 patient complications would be avoided annually, expenses would decline by an aggregate $10.9 billion a year and the average patient stay would decrease by more than half a day.

If the same standards were applied to all inpatients, the impact would be even greater, Solucient said.

The annual report analyzes Medicare data and specific regional and hospital performance for quality, differences in payment protocols and the availability of quality staff, among other indicators. Danbury Hospital “has successfully managed all of these factors to improve patient outcomes and build a healthy business structure to service its community,” said Dr. Matthew A. Miller, the hospital”™s chief medical officer.

Danbury Hospital was among 25 ranked hospitals around the country under the teaching hospital category with 200 or more acute-care beds in service and involvement in at least three graduate medical education programs.

“Patient safety performance measures in the report reflect both clinical quality and the effectiveness of systems within the hospital,” Miller said.

The hospital has streamlined the admissions process, uses Web-based scheduling and other service improvements “to enhance the patient experience in terms of quality and convenience,” said Frank J. Kelly, president and chief executive officer. One result is that the hospital has achieved national benchmark level scores “for overall organizational performance that compare very favorably to our peers across the nation,” he said.