Two Ascension St. Vincent's Hospitals Named To Fortune/IBM Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals® List

From The JAX Chamber:

May 11, 2021

Jacksonville, Fla. – Ascension St. Vincent’s Clay County and Ascension St. Vincent’s Southside have both been named to the Fortune/IBM Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals® list. This is the third time Ascension St. Vincent’s Clay County has been recognized as one of the top-performing community hospitals and the first time for Ascension St. Vincent’s Southside. Fortune recently published the annual list.

IBM Watson Health has identified the top hospitals from a rigorous evaluation of 2,675 short-term, acute care, non-federal hospitals in the U.S. The annual list recognizes excellence in clinical outcomes, operational efficiency, patient experience, and financial health. IBM Watson Health established the list to help identify best practices that may help other healthcare organizations achieve consistent, balanced, and sustainable high performance.

This year’s ranking of top hospitals also introduces a measure of hospitals’ contributions to community health with a focus on equity developed by a team of experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity and the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. For the ranking, hospitals were surveyed across three components:

• Assessing hospital contributions to community health as a provider of critical services for community health and preventive care;
• Identifying ways that hospitals can contribute to community health as a community partner teaming up with local organizations to implement critical programs; and
• Focusing on ways that hospitals promote community health through their practices as anchor institutions supporting local economic and social progress.

Hospitals receive credit for meeting a certain number of best practice standards in each component as part of the survey scoring and the new measure led to a change in ranking for more than one-third of the 100 hospitals.

“This recognition demonstrates our continued commitment to providing safe, high-quality, personalized, and compassionate care as conveniently as possible for those we’re blessed to serve,” said Ascension Florida and Gulf Coast Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Estrellita Redmon. “This recognition wouldn’t be possible without the dedication of our doctors, nurses, and all of our associates who regularly go above and beyond in service to others.”

According to IBM Watson Health, as compared to similar hospitals, the hospitals included on the Fortune/IBM Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals list had better results on key clinical and operational performance indicators. These included survival rates, patient complications, healthcare-associated infections, 30-day mortality and 30-day hospital-wide readmission rates, length of stay, throughput in emergency departments, inpatient expenses, profitability, and ratings from patients.

“We are proud of all of the hospitals, health systems and their dedicated clinicians and staff included among the Fortune/IBM Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals,” said Irene Dankwa-Mullan, MD, MPH, Chief Health Equity Officer and Deputy Chief Health Officer at IBM Watson Health. “From small community hospitals to major teaching hospitals, organizations on this list demonstrate a relentless commitment to high value, patient-centered care and innovation. They also recognize the importance of contributing to the health of their communities and we applaud them for their programs that help provide equitable quality care and address health disparities.”

For more information, visit www.100tophospitals.com. To learn more about Ascension St. Vincent’s, visit www.jaxhealth.com.

This press release was produced by The JAX Chamber. The views expressed here are the author’s own.