St. Helena Hospital Earns Top Performer Status From Medicare.

Achieves Top Ranking for the Treatment of Heart Attack and Heart Failure

ST. HELENA, Calif. -- St. Helena Hospital has been named one of the top performing hospitals in the United States in a groundbreaking study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The study is a pay-for-performance project that rewards hospitals for delivering high quality care. Called the CMS/Premier Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID), a total of 260 hospitals are participating nationwide.

St. Helena Hospital was rated in the top 10 percent of hospitals nationally for the treatment of heart attack, based on its second-year, overall quality score. It was also rated in the top 20 percent for the treatment of heart failure. Based on these scores, St. Helena has been designated a "Top Performer" along with 115 others who rated highly.

"We are one of 18 California hospitals participating in this patient care quality improvement project and one of five to participate in Northern California," said Lisa Fowler, BSN, RN, Clinical Quality Coordinator. "For heart attack we achieved a 99.00 percentage ranking," she said. "This is our second year to rank in the top 10 percent in the nation in this clinical measure."

"Providing outstanding patient care has always been our primary mission," said JoAline Olson, President and CEO of St. Helena Hospital. "We were pleased to participate in this demonstration and are proud that our performance was rated among the best."

Data from the second year of the HQID, validated by CMS and reported publicly last week, demonstrates significant national improvement in the quality of care across five clinical focus areas, including 1,284 heart attack patient lives saved.

The project compares St. Helena Hospital's performance on quality and the cost of care for five specific clinical conditions (acute myocardial infarction, coronary artery bypass graft, heart failure, pneumonia, and hip and knee replacement) with the performance of other participating hospitals using nationally accepted, standard performance measures.

St Helena Hospital has been participating in the project for two years and will continue helping CMS hone quality care criteria through 2007.

For complete information about the HQID project and to view those hospitals ranking in the top 50 percent in each focus area, visit www.qualitydemo.com.

St Helena Hospital is part of Adventist Health, a not-for-profit health system operating in California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington. Founded on the Seventh-day Adventist legacy of Christian health care, Adventist Health is comprised of 20 hospitals with more than 3,100 beds, 18,300 employees, numerous clinics and outpatient facilities, 16 home care agencies and three joint-venture retirement centers. For more information, visit www.sthelenahospital.org or www.adventisthealth.org.