Adventist Medical Center Receives 2005 Premier Award For Quality
Award is the Medical Center's third in a year recognizing quality care.
07/12/2005

PORTLAND, Ore.-- A national alliance of not-for-profit hospitals and health care systems recently named Portland-based Adventist Medical Center (AMC) a winner of its prestigious Premier Award for Quality. The highly distinguished award, presented by Premier Healthcare Informatics, is given in five clinical areas and is based on quality and operational efficiency. From a pool of nearly 400 eligible hospitals, AMC was selected as an industry leader for its care related to heart failure patients.

"Better health care through better use of information and resources is what distinguishes Premier Award for Quality winners from their peers," said Stephanie Alexander, senior vice president and general manager of Premier Healthcare Informatics. "These hospitals, big and small, are leading the industry using best practices and evidence-based decision making to develop more efficient ways to deliver excellent patient care."

Clinical areas considered for the 2005 Premier Award for Quality are total joint replacement of the hip and/or knee, coronary artery bypass graft, heart failure, community acquired pneumonia and acute myocardial infarction. Hospitals that submitted data to Premier's Perspective™ clinical comparative database (the largest clinical comparative database in the nation) between July 2003 and July 2004 were eligible to participate in the 2005 Premier Award for Quality program.

"Our employee family is continually seeking ways to improve patient care each and every day," said Deryl Jones, AMC President. "The Premier Award for Quality is evidence that we are succeeding in our efforts."

The Premier Award is the third quality award that Adventist Medical Center has received in the past year. In July of 2004, it was one of just six health care organizations presented with an Oregon Hospital Quality Award by OMPRO, a health care quality improvement organization. And more recently, it was the recipient of a 2004 California Award for Performance Excellence (CAPE) Eureka award, which is modeled after the nationally recognized Malcolm Baldrige Award given to companies and organizations that demonstrate continuous improvement and best-in-class performance in key business categories. Adventist Medical Center was the first company outside of California to ever receive the award.

"Today's technology allows us to use sophisticated tools to collect and analyze data about the delivery of patient care over time," said Jones. "By analyzing how and what we do, we can identify efficient ways to deliver excellent care to our patients."

About Premier Healthcare Informatics

Premier Healthcare Informatics offers performance measurement, benchmarking and reporting products and related advisory services and methodologies to support health systems’ and hospitals’ quality improvement efforts. Premier Healthcare Informatics is part of Premier, Inc., a strategic health care alliance that provides an array of performance solutions to hospitals and other providers.

About Adventist Medical Center
Adventist Medical Center (AMC), located in southeast Portland, is a nonprofit, 302-bed acute care facility, offering a full range of inpatient, outpatient and emergency services throughout the Portland/Vancouver metropolitan area.

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Adventist Medical Center is part of Adventist Health, a not-for-profit, faith-based health system operating in California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. Founded on the  Seventh-day Adventist heritage of Christian health care, Adventist Health is comprised of 19 hospitals with more than 2,800 beds, 18,000 employees, numerous clinics and outpatient facilities, 16 home care agencies and three joint-venture retirement centers. For more information about Adventist Health, visit www.adventisthealth.org.