Remember when people automatically assumed they’d have to find state-of-the-art care somewhere else – like Portland or another state?
Thanks to providers and staff, patients now come to our Magnet hospital for the best care, from our Beacon Award-winning nursing units to cancer treatment and bariatric surgery — or from double hip replacements to implanting the newest pacemaker the size of a vitamin pill.
Drumroll … we’re on the national map again.
Salem Hospital is the only Oregon hospital listed in the Watson Health™ 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals for 2018. Our partnership with local cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, vascular surgeons and interventional radiologists, combined with dedicated, highly skilled staff, enables us to achieve this honor.
If this sounds familiar, it is. We won this award in 2015 and 2016. The honor is based on an exhaustive look into our performance in a variety of areas related to complications, outcomes, mortality, readmission rates and cost. Our care wasn’t rated great – it was rated superior.
I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. As you know, heart disease is the leading killer in the U.S. with the latest CDC data (2016) listing 633,842 heart-related deaths followed by 595,930 cancer deaths. These two diseases account for half of the deaths recorded annually.
To put this in even more perspective, according to the Watson report, if all cardiovascular providers in the U.S. performed at our level, nearly 10,000 more lives would be saved each year.
To borrow a phrase from their report, we are “a leader for others to follow.” Thanks to you, our community is treated with a level of skill and compassion that is backed by a promise to improve, every day.
Clearly, patients don’t need to go elsewhere for care. No doubt more people will come to us because Salem Health has raised the bar!
And with that, I raise my glass to you.
For a deep dive on what they measured, check out the IBM Watson Health™ 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals study here. (They’ve been doing this for 19 years.)