Sparks, Summit receive quality recognition

Sparks Regional Medical Center in Fort Smith and Summit Medical Center in Van Buren were named among the nation’s Top Performers on Key Quality Measures by The Joint Commission, the leading accreditor of health care organizations in America

The report was issued Wednesday (Sept. 19).

The Joint Commission began this ratings program as a means for publicly highlighting top performing hospitals that have achieved exemplary performance in using evidence-based clinical processes that are shown to improve care for certain conditions, including heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgical care, children’s asthma, stroke and venous thromboembolism, as well as inpatient psychiatric services.

Sparks and Summit, owned and operated, respectively, by Naples, Fla.-based Health Management Associates, are two of 620 hospitals in the U.S. earning the distinction of Top Performer on Key Quality Measures by meeting or exceeding target rates of performance in the last year.

Sparks Regional was recognized for its achievement in heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care. Summit Medical Center was recognized for its achievement in pneumonia care.

This is the second consecutive year that Summit Medical Center is recognized as a Top Performer in its quality processes to treat pneumonia. Summit Medical Center is one of only 244 hospitals that achieved the distinction two years in a row.

Sparks and Summit are two of 41 hospitals operated by HMA named to the Top Performer list. Summit is also one of 30 Health Management hospitals to be a Top Performer in both years of this recognition program.

Each of the hospitals named as a Top Performer on Key Quality Measures met two 95% performance thresholds on 2011 accountability measure data. First, each hospital achieved performance of 95% or above on a single, composite score that includes all the accountability measures for which it reports data to The Joint Commission, including measures that had fewer than 30 eligible cases or patients.

Also, each hospital met or exceeded 95% performance on every accountability measure for which it reports data to The Joint Commission, excluding any measures with fewer than 30 eligible cases or patients.

A 95% score means a hospital provided an evidence-based practice 95 times out of 100 opportunities to provide the practice. Each accountability measure represents an evidence-based practice – for example, giving aspirin at arrival for heart attack patients, giving antibiotics one hour before surgery, and providing a home management plan for children with asthma.