UT Southwestern University Hospitals garner top patient safety grade
DALLAS – Oct. 31, 2017 – UT Southwestern University Hospitals ranked among the nation’s safest hospitals based on composite safety scores including risk of infection, risk of falls, and patient satisfaction with hospital staff.
The A grade from The Leapfrog Group, a national hospital safety consulting firm, comes as UT Southwestern’s flagship William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital prepares for a $480 million expansion that will add a third tower for patient rooms, more operating and emergency room space, and treatment space for the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute, now based at Zale Lipshy University Hospital.
“The safety and satisfaction of our patients are at the center of the care we provide at our hospitals. We talk about them daily. We look for ways to improve daily. We want them not just top of mind, but infused into everything we do – from our practices through the very design of our facilities,” said Dr. John Warner, Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of University Hospitals at UT Southwestern.
UT Southwestern gathered input from hundreds of people – patients, family members, community members, nurses, and doctors – in designing Clements University Hospital from the patient-in-the-bed perspective, and has continued to refine those concepts, which will be incorporated into the new 12-story tower as well.
Individual rooms, the selection of special surfaces, and the orchestration of movement for inventory and laundry away from patient areas are all designed to help reduce potential for infection, while enhancing patients’ experience and satisfaction, noted Dr. Warner, an interventional cardiologist and Professor of Internal Medicine.
To meet a greater-than-expected need for specialty patient care in North Texas and the surrounding states, UT Southwestern recently broke ground on the connected third tower at Clements University Hospital. The project is scheduled to be complete in 2020.
Highlights include:
- An additional 650,000 square feet of space
- Nearly 300 additional hospital beds (460 currently)
- An additional 19 operating rooms
- Two additional parking structures
- Expansion of the hospital’s Emergency Department, and imaging services.
The addition will enable UT Southwestern to improve the quality of hospital care and services, lower the cost of care by eliminating redundancies in infrastructure and inventory, and position Clements University Hospital as the primary center for specialty care in the region. Inpatient services for the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute will be consolidated in the new tower enhancing the quality of care and the efficiency of care to reduce expenses, while accommodating growth. The expansion also will support growing future referrals through Southwestern Health Resources, the clinically integrated network formed in partnership with Texas Health Resources.
“Having virtually all of our inpatient services in one building will help streamline many of our consultation services and support our team-based, multidisciplinary care model,” said Dr. Warner, who holds the Jim and Norma Smith Distinguished Chair for Interventional Cardiology, and the Nancy and Jeremy Halbreich, Susan and Theodore Strauss Professorship in Cardiology. “With this addition, we are even better positioned to serve the growing number of patients and families who come to us for the best care, the most advanced treatments, and the compassionate attention for which UT Southwestern University Hospitals are known.”
Since opening Clements University Hospital in December 2014, UT Southwestern has received consistent recognition for quality of care and patient satisfaction, including:
- Ranked the No. 1 hospital in Dallas-Fort Worth and second in Texas, and among the top 50 programs nationally in six clinical specialty areas, according to S. News & World Report.
- Named for a seventh consecutive year to HealthCare’s 2017 “Most Wired” list, which is distributed annually by Hospitals & Health Networks magazine, the flagship publication of the American Hospital Association.
- Recognized with three Excellence in Healthcare Awards for excellence in patient care and satisfaction by national health care research leader Professional Research Consultants Inc. for UT Southwestern’s Emergency Department, surgery services, and Outpatient Surgery Center.
“These results are another testament of the commitment to excellence in achieving outcomes that matter most to our patients and their families,” said Dr. William Daniel, Vice President and Chief Quality Officer, who holds the William T. Solomon Professorship in Clinical Quality Improvement at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade uses national performance measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey and Health Information Technology Supplement. The nonprofit organization measures the quality and safety of more than 2,600 general acute-care hospitals across the nation twice annually.
About UT Southwestern Medical Center
UT Southwestern, one of the premier academic medical centers in the nation, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution’s faculty has received six Nobel Prizes, and includes 22 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 18 members of the National Academy of Medicine, and 14 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The faculty of more than 2,700 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide care in about 80 specialties to more than 100,000 hospitalized patients, 600,000 emergency room cases, and oversee approximately 2.2 million outpatient visits a year.
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