The Medical Leader

PIKEVILLE – Pikeville Medical Center (PMC) has announced that it has joined QUEST™ High Performing Hospitals, a voluntary, national hospital collaborative. Approximately 200 hospitals representing 31 states are now participating in this project, which is currently linking the two main goals of health reform proposals being considered by Congress: quality improvement and cost reduction.

Developed by the Premier Healthcare Alliance in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), QUEST is designed to springboard hospitals to new levels of performance and inform public policies with tangible results. To accomplish this, QUEST benchmarked participating facilities using data from Premier’s clinical database to determine the “baseline” level of performance in cost, mortality and evidence-based care delivery.

According to Don Berwick, MD, IHI’s president and CEO, “The QUEST model and measurements are not just about individual components of system performance; they are about healthcare as a system. They address the macro issues of healthcare, such as the need for board and executive leadership. Importantly, QUEST tries to link finance to quality, an important matter that has not gotten sufficient attention in the past.”

Hospitals were then challenged to overcome the main factors that lead to deaths, errors and excessive costs, and measure themselves against one another to achieve top performance based on the following goals:

• Save lives – Achieve a mortality rate that is 18 percent less than expected.
• Safely reduce the cost of care – Reduce inpatient costs below the midpoint among participating hospitals.
• Deliver the most reliable and effective care – Deliver every recommended evidence-based care measure for each patient.
• Improve patient safety (year 2 measure) – Prevent incidents of harm in 30 categories, including healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs) and birth injuries.
• Increase patient satisfaction (year 2 measure) – Dramatically improve the patient care experience.

“Our hospital looks forward to working with other leading hospitals and health care organizations to both share and learn new ways to better serve our patients while safely reducing the cost of care,” said Jerry Johnson, chief operating officer at Pikeville Medical Center. “Our goal as a part of this collaborative is to reliably deliver the most efficient, effective and caring hospital experience for each and every one of our patients.”

QUEST also benefits from an advisory panel of experts from 20 of the country’s top health care organizations, such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, National Quality Forum, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Added Susan DeVore, Premier’s incoming president and CEO, “QUEST is serving as a test bed to help shape health care reimbursement policies that reward quality. What we learn from the project will work toward truly defining what high-performing healthcare is.”

About Pikeville Medical Center
Pikeville Medical Center is a nationally recognized health care facility that offers more than 300 services ranging from cardiac and cancer care to neurosurgery and orthopedic programs. The hospital, recognized as one of Kentucky’s Top 10 “Best Places to Work” for two consecutive years, was the first hospital in Kentucky – and among the first 10 hospitals in the nation – to be awarded the highest accreditation from the Society of Chest Pain Centers. The hospital is a 261-bed modern facility on a sprawling 500,000 square-foot campus with more than 1,600 employees. Our employees are committed to providing quality, regional health care in a Christian environment.

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