El Camino receives national recognition El Camino receives national recognition (August 06, 2004)

Patient care, high staff retention among reasons for praise

By Julie O'Shea

Mountain View's El Camino Hospital has been named a national model for patient care and safety, according to a study released last week by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports research on health issues.

El Camino was one of just four U.S. hospitals to receive such a distinction, among 200 studied, and the only one on the West Coast. In addition, the hospital recently received the highest ranking in the Patients' Evaluation of Performance in a state study. And it was also named one of the nation's most wired hospitals.

Quality patient care, the ability to attract and retain the best medical staff and being pioneers in clinical information technology are just some of the things that sets El Camino apart, according to Commonwealth study.

"It is amazing," hospital spokesperson Judy Twitchell said. "It's always a wonderful reaffirmation that we are doing this, and we can offer this to our community."

The hospitals highlighted in the study were chosen not only for their performance strengths but diversity in their geographic region, size and teaching status, a Commonwealth official said.

"There's no higher goal than patient outcome and safety," Twitchell said. "We want to continue attracting the best to come work here."

The study noted that at El Camino "respect for nurses is expected and enforced, and non-complying physicians are given warnings that come with the possible loss of staff privileges."

This is just one of the specific factors that led to El Camino's national model distinction. Other observations made by the study team include a "committed, high-quality medical staff" and "a philosophy that gives individual departments and units the autonomy and accountability for identifying and resolving quality problems."

Researchers conducted four in-depth site visits and wrote up individual case studies to determine how each of the top hospitals achieved their goals. Twitchell said El Camino administrators have known they were part of this study for about a year but were asked to keep the announcement under wraps until the study could be published.

"These top-performing hospitals have been unusually self motivating," said Dr. Stephen Schoenbaum, the Commonwealth Fund's senior vice president, in a statement. "Incentives from public and private purchasers and insurers might encourage more hospitals to follow their lead."

The three other hospitals which were recognized as national models were Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston; Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C. and Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pa.

E-mail Julie O'Shea at joshea@mv-voice.com

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