As we near the end of 2018, a look back at the year reveals fresh insights into a host of newer initiatives within the University of Pennsylvania Health System that have set new standards in our constant pursuit of providing the best possible care for our patients.
First, we saved more lives, deploying everything from cutting-edge clinical trials to remote monitoring initiatives that closely connect high-risk patients to their care teams after they leave the hospital. We’ve also reduced hospital readmissions, and provided a more engaging experience for patients at every step on their journey toward better health.
This fall, I shared news about our innovative partnership with Independence Blue Cross (IBC), which achieved our largest reduction in hospital readmissions yet. It was a bold move that helped drive an unprecedented eight percent reduction in overall 30-day preventable readmissions across the health system over the last year.
But we also owe that achievement to the growing list of complementary efforts led by clinical teams in cardiology, oncology, and hepatology, among many others, who are utilizing newer clinical and care transition pathways and telemedicine to keep patients out of the hospital and healthier.
Penn’s Home Telehealth program, for example, successfully reduced readmissions by 35 percent in some of our most medically complex patient populations. To cut down on unnecessary emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations for cancer patients, the Oncology Evaluation Unit in the Abramson Cancer Center implemented new strategies to identify patients at high risk of unplanned hospital care and developed new pathways to direct them from the ED to a more specialized urgent care-type of clinic. The program has cut costs and hospital admissions, and is now being replicated for other patient groups who need help managing symptoms of their disease.
We’re also charting national models for attacking the opioid epidemic. A series of system-wide innovations, including education on alternative analgesics and “nudges” for clinicians built into our electronic health record system, cut prescriptions for opioids by 18 percent this year.
I’m especially proud that, among our peer set of the nation’s top academic medical centers — where patients with the toughest cases turn for help — we lead the curve in saving lives. This year, our observed-to-expected mortality index fell by more than 20 percent — which translates to 1,368 lives saved.
Quality data reflects an institution’s ability to deliver top-level care, but equally important is how patients perceive that care. It has been shown that the more satisfied a patient, the better they perceive an experience, and the more likely they are to adhere to their treatment regimen and have better outcomes. Shared-decision making has that same positive impact.
Our entire staff’s dedication to patient needs and engagement has helped enhance our reputation as a highly engaged member of the communities we serve. In 2017, inpatient patient satisfaction scores rose by nearly 20 percentile points, and by 40 percentile points among ambulatory care patients. Our physician and advanced practice care provider ratings averaged 4.8 out of 5 stars in 156,000 surveys.
We look closely at how we’re doing in our patient safety and quality efforts every day to identify trends and patterns that require extra emphasis or creative solutions. We’re proud when we see improvements year over year, but external recognition provides another layer of measurement that matters, too. I’m proud to announce that our efforts in quality and patient safety have been recognized with the 2018 Vizient Quality Leadership Award.
Vizient, Inc., an alliance of more than 100 academic health systems like ours, annually recognizes top performing academic medical centers, “complex teaching medical centers,” and community hospitals that demonstrate superior quality and safety performance. This year, they measured institutions in the following six domains of care: mortality, effectiveness, safety, efficiency, equity, and patient centeredness. High scores in these categories placed Penn Medicine hospitals at the top of the rankings.
Overall, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) ranked sixth among 99 academic medical centers. Other UPHS hospitals — with the exception of newly added Princeton Health, which was not ranked as a Penn Medicine hospital for 2018 — were categorized as complex teaching medical centers.
In this category, Chester County Hospital impressively ranked second out of 100 centers. Penn Presbyterian Medical Center (PPMC) ranked 12th, while Pennsylvania Hospital ranked 18th, and Lancaster General Health — its first year in the rankings — was ranked 29th.
For our innovative efforts in the digital health technology space, Penn Medicine also received two Vizient Clinical Innovation Awards, which recognize organizations that have implemented digital solutions that improved clinical care and patient experiences.
The honors follow a score of other national recognitions in 2018, including our ranking of the combined enterprise of the HUP-PPMC on the “Best Hospitals” Honor Roll in U.S. News and World Report’s annual survey of nearly 5,000 hospitals. The magazine also named HUP-PPMC as the #1 hospital in the Philadelphia region and the state, and all of our hospitals received regional and state honors, as well.
As we move into 2019, I want to express my deepest gratitude and pride in our staff for their achievements, tireless commitment, and forward-thinking innovation. It has once again set Penn Medicine apart from its peers in academic medicine and most importantly, provided a safer, consistent, and higher quality care for our patients that I know will only continue to evolve and improve.