Topics / HEALTH : 2 Local Hospitals on Nation’s Top 100

Two San Gabriel Valley hospitals--Methodist Hospital of Southern California in Arcadia and West Covina’s Queen of the Valley Hospital--are on a list of the country’s top 100.

The list is from a study called “100 Top U.S. Hospitals--Benchmarks for Success.” It was released in January by two health care consulting firms--Health Care Investment Analysts and Mercer Management Consulting.

The firms studied 1992 data from the country’s 5,600 acute care hospitals and named the top 2% based on categories that included mortality, infection rates and financial stability.

Hospitals were not ranked or cited individually.

At Queen of the Valley, President Pete Makowski said the hospital’s “110% Club” recognizes staff members who go beyond the call of duty. A recent winner was an oncology nurse who surprised a terminally ill patient with an anniversary cake, he said. The nurse bought the cake herself after learning that the patient could not go home to celebrate with her husband.

Methodist Hospital President Dennis M. Lee said the medical staff, management and other employees work as a team to solve problems. One such team developed a plan that got laboratory test results to physicians hours earlier.

The study’s authors noted: “If all hospitals were able to perform at the level of these benchmark facilities, the results for the health care industry would be dramatic; hospital charges would decline by $40 billion; mortality rates would drop 12%, and morbidity rates would drop 13%.”