Awards for Excellence in Healthcare

Beebe Medical Center Receives National Quality
Award for Orthopaedic Care

Beebe Medical Center has announced that its orthopaedic care is ranked among the Top 5% of all hospitals in the nation.

The ranking is made by HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings company, and is part of a national study of patient outcomes in the nation's 5,000 nonfederal hospitals.

Healthgrades said that Beebe Medical Center is the only hospital in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia to receive 5-star ratings for all orthopaedic procedures measured by HealthGrades.

"We are honored to have earned this recognition from HealthGrades, and we are extremely proud of our Beebe team," said Jeffery M. Fried, Beebe Medical Center President and CEO. "Our goal at Beebe Medical Center is to continually strive to reach and maintain excellence in healthcare. This rating reflects the dedication of everyone in the medical center family - our medical staff, our employees, our board of directors and our volunteers to consistently offer quality healthcare."

Beebe Medical Center also is ranked best for orthopaedics on the Delmarva Peninsula for the fourth consecutive year, and is ranked No. 1 in Delaware for overall orthopaedic care for the fourth year in a row.

Beebe Medical Center also received 5-star ratings for the treatment of heart attack, pneumonia, stroke, gastrointestinal bleeding, and sepsis.

A wide variation in quality exists among American hospitals, according to the twelfth annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America study. Patients were 80 percent less likely to experience a major complication in 5-star rated hospitals when compared with 1-star rated hospitals across a range of procedures studied such as knee replacement and hip replacement surgeries. Top-performing hospitals also dramatically outperformed the national average, with patients experiencing, on average, 61 percent fewer in-hospital complications among the procedures studied.

The study also found that if all hospitals performed at the level of a 5-star rated hospital, 110,687 orthopedic in-hospital complications may have been avoided among Medicare patients over the three years studied.

Across all the 17 procedures and diagnoses in which mortality was studied, there was an approximate 72% lower chance of dying in a 5-star rated hospital compared to a 1-star rated hospital.

Beebe Medical Center continually focuses on quality and performance improvement. It has ongoing efforts to improve procedures and implement new ones that put quality and patient safety first. Earlier this year's Beebe Medical Center's Tunnell Cancer Center was named a recipient of the 2008 Commission on Cancer Outstanding Achievement Award for excellence. Tunnell Cancer Center is one of only 95 cancer programs across the nation, and the only one in Delaware, to earn this prestigious award from the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer.

Tunnell Cancer Center Earns National Achievement Award

Beebe Medical Center's Tunnell Cancer Center has been named a recipient of the 2008 Commission on Cancer Outstanding Achievement Award for excellence. Tunnell Cancer Center is one of only 95 cancer programs across the nation, and the only one in Delaware, to earn this prestigious award from the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC).

The CoC Outstanding achievement award recognizes the significant commitment by the medical staff, administration and personnel for providing high quality cancer care, and meeting and exceeding the standards set by the CoC Approvals Program, stated Stephen B. Edge, MD, FACS, CoC Chairman. Tunnell Cancer Center not only met the basic standards of the accreditation program, but excelled in seven areas where Commendation has been awarded.

Earlier in 2009, the Commission granted Tunnell Cancer Center a Three-Year Approval with Commendation. It was the second time in a row that Tunnell Cancer Center has gained the coveted Commendation designation, although Tunnell Cancer Center has consistently received approval from the Commission. Read more.

Quality Insights of Delaware Honors Beebe

Quality Insights of Delaware, the state's Medicare quality improvement organization, honored Beebe Medical Center and Beebe Home Health for outstanding performance in improving the quality of care. Beebe Medical Center received two Golden Apple awards. The Golden Apple Award for Quality Leadership was for Beebe Medical Center's progress towards implementing a closed-loop, bar-coding system for medication administration. In this system, the wristbands worn by patients in the hospital will include bar codes with the patient's demographic information that work in concert with computerized medication information. This system ensures that medications being given throughout the patient's hospital stay are the correct ones.

Beebe Medical Center also earned the Quality Partner Golden Apple Award for outreach efforts to help community physicians implement electronic health records. Beebe Medical Center has developed a strategic communication effort to help physicians work together with the medical center to develop and implement an electronic medical record system that will connect physicians' offices with the medical center's records.

Beebe Home Health was recognized with a Quality Associate Award for participation in healthcare quality improvement activities. These activities included reducing inpatient re-hospitalization, improving ambulation, managing pain that interferes with activity, and improving the culture of the organization. Beebe Home Health collaborated with Quality Insights of Delaware and implemented multiple best practices to improve the quality of care.

Delaware Quality Award

Beebe Medical Center received the 2006 W.L. (Bill) Gore Award for Excellence, a distinction based on the Malcolm Baldrige Award Criteria. The recognition honors organizations that excel in leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, management, and results.

In presenting the award, the governor called Beebe a "most esteemed leader" in the state's medical and business community and noted that Beebe is the first hospital in Delaware to win the award.