Four Johns Hopkins Medicine hospitals have been honored as leaders in care by the Joint Commission’s 2014 Top Performer on Key Quality Measures program. The Top Performer designation is reserved for accredited hospitals that consistently perform at a very high level, following best practices for treating people who require surgery or suffer heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia or other serious conditions. Only 1,043 hospitals out of more than 3,300 eligible hospitals in the United States achieved the 2014 Top Performer distinction.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland; Howard County General Hospital in Columbia, Maryland; and All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, each earned the distinction. This is the third consecutive year that The Johns Hopkins Hospital has been recognized as a Top Performer, a distinction only achieved by 435 hospitals across the nation.

“High-quality care is Johns Hopkins Medicine’s top priority,” says Peter Pronovost, senior vice president for patient safety and quality for Johns Hopkins Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. “Our goal is to partner with patients, their loved ones and all interested parties to reduce preventable harm, improve clinical outcomes and experiences, and reduce waste in health care delivery.”

To receive Top Performer status, all four hospitals achieved at least 95 percent compliance on evidence-based processes of care, known as accountability measures, in all measures for one or more areas during the 2014 calendar year. Both The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Howard County General Hospital received Top Performer recognition in six areas: heart attack, heart failure, surgical care, pneumonia, children’s asthma care and perinatal care. Johns Hopkins Bayview was recognized for achievements in heart attack, heart failure, surgical care, pneumonia and children’s asthma care. All Children’s Hospital was acknowledged in the category of children’s asthma care. The hospitals were announced in the Joint Commission’s annual report, “America’s Hospitals: Improving Quality and Safety,” released in November 2015.

Pronovost says it takes a coordinated commitment from all staff members — from board to bedside — to enable Johns Hopkins Medicine’s hospitals to reliably deliver best practices of care to patients across its health system.

In 2012, Johns Hopkins Medicine developed a framework to improve quality of care across its six inpatient hospitals. Developed by the Armstrong Institute, the model identified clear goals, strong leadership and infrastructure, staff engagement, transparent reporting methods and an accountability model as key drivers of performance improvements. Two years after the plan’s implementation, the participating hospitals successfully obtained 96 percent compliance on six of the seven targeted measures. Results from the strategy were published in the journal Academic Medicine in December 2014.

More details about Johns Hopkins Medicine’s approach to improving performance in the accountability measures are available on the Armstrong Institute’s website.

On the Web:

• Johns Hopkins Medicine Charts Successful Path for Improving Patient Safety at Large Health Systems