Submitted by Denise Sortor
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Vermont Business Magazine Dartmouth-Hitchcock has been named the 2016 recipient of the Rising Star Award by Vizient, formerly the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), an alliance of some of the nation’s top academic medical centers and health systems. The award recognizes Dartmouth-Hitchcock for making significant improvements in year-over-year rankings in Vizient's annual Quality and Accountability Study. Dartmouth-Hitchcock ranks at #22 in quality among Vizient’s 102 academic medical center members, steadily rising during the past five years from 67, to 57, to 47 successively. D-H was the only academic medical center to earn the Rising Star Award this year. Vizient’s Quality and Accountability Study identifies exemplary performance in safety, mortality, clinical effectiveness, efficiency, patient-centeredness and equity of care in academic medical centers and community hospitals.
Dr James N Weinstein, CEO and President of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock health system, said: “As an organization built around population health and value-based care, there is nothing more important than the quality we deliver in every interaction with patients and families. Every person who works at Dartmouth-Hitchcock has shared in our relentless drive for quality. I am very pleased that they can now all share in this award.” Vizient, the largest member-driven health care performance improvement company in the country, presented the Rising Star award during the 2016 Vizient Clinical Connections Summit held September 28-30 in Dallas, to Dr George T Blike, Chief Quality and Value Officer at D-H.
“This extraordinary jump from #47 to #22 reflects years of work to continually improve our quality of care,” Blike says. “It also speaks to the dedication by all of D-H’s staff, thousands of people, who are committed to providing high-quality patient care with meticulous attention to detail.” “During the past several years, through dedicated efforts and teamwork, we have saved hundreds of lives for our patients who were having heart attacks, strokes, or who were suffering from systemic infections like sepsis,” Blike adds. “Additionally, we have avoided hundreds of complications from other infections, bed sores, falls, and by delivering medications without error.”
“Vizient is proud to celebrate Dartmouth-Hitchcock for their outstanding work and achievement toward continuous quality improvement and accountability,” Julie Cerese, senior vice president, performance improvement collaboratives and advisory. “As a Rising Star, Dartmouth-Hitchcock has attained both top-quartile performance and significant year-over-year improvement.”