Texas Health Hospitals to Receive Financial Awards for Quality

Twelve hospitals to be awarded a total of $363,801 in payments from the
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

ARLINGTON, Texas, Aug. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Texas Health hospitals
across the Metroplex will receive financial awards from the Centers for
Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for performing well in a national quality
incentive project.

The 12 Texas Health hospitals participating in the project will receive 56
awards totaling $363,801. Each of the hospitals attained or exceeded quality
benchmarks in one or more areas of care measured in the Premier-CMS health
care alliance Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID)
pay-for-performance project. The areas of care measured in the national
project are: heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, coronary artery bypass
graft surgery, and hip and knee surgical services.

"Health care consumers across North Texas should be proud to know the
community hospitals that have served them for decades are recognized for
continual improvements in quality," said Texas Health Chief Executive Officer
Douglas D. Hawthorne, FACHE. "These awards represent a lot of hard work and
effort across our health care system to continually raise the bar for the
quality of care we provide to the communities we serve."

The Premier pay-for-performance project is one of many measurements Texas
Health hospitals use to benchmark and improve quality. These results are from
the fourth year of the HQID project. Texas Health has participated in the
project since its inception in October 2003.

The HQID project is the first national project of its kind, designed to
determine if economic incentives to hospitals are effective at improving the
quality of inpatient care. Through the project, Premier collects a set of more
than 30 evidence-based clinical quality measures from more than 250 hospitals
across the country.

An analysis of mortality rates at hospitals participating in the project
indicated that improvements made in the quality of care saved an estimated
4,700 heart attack patients nationwide during its first four years, according
to Premier Inc.

The average Composite Quality Scores (CQS), an aggregate of all quality
measures within each clinical area, improved significantly between the
inception of the program and the end of Year 4 in all five clinical focus
areas:

-- From 87.5 percent to 96.3 percent for patients with heart attack;
-- From 84.8 percent to 98.5 percent for patients with coronary artery
bypass graft;
-- From 64.5 percent to 92.2 percent for patients with heart failure;
-- From 69.3 percent to 92.6 percent for patients with pneumonia;

-- From 84.6 percent to 97.2 percent for patients with hip and knee
replacement.

Hospitals participating in the project have three opportunities to receive
financial incentives:

-- Top Performer Award -- The top 20 percent of hospitals in each
clinical
area receive an additional incentive payment.
-- Attainment Performance Award -- Hospitals that attain or exceed the
median level composite quality score receive an additional incentive
payment. The attainment median benchmark is the median level composite
quality score from Year 2 of the project.

-- Improvement Award -- Hospitals that attain median level performance
and
are among the top 20 percent of hospitals with the largest percentage
quality improvements in each clinical area receive an additional
incentive payment. Improvement is calculated based on the change in
the
hospital composite quality score in the performance year compared to
two
years prior.

SOURCE Texas Health Resources

Rachel Raya of Texas Health Resources, +1-214-597-3539,
RachelRaya@TexasHealth.org