Cookeville Regional Medical Center has been named one of the nation's top performance improvement leader hospitals for 2007 by Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals as well as the leading provider of decision support solutions that help organizations across the healthcare industry improve clinical and business performance.

Cookeville Regional is recognized for being one of a hundred hospitals making the greatest progress in improving hospital-wide performance over five consecutive years (2003-2007).  The 2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals®: Performance Improvement Leaders have set national benchmarks for the rate and consistency of improvement in clinical outcomes, safety, hospital efficiency, and financial stability.  Cookeville Regional and its medical staff have made major strides in increasing the quality and efficiency of services locally.

Findings from the fifth edition of the Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals®: Performance Improvement Leaders study appears in the August 11, 2008, issue of Modern Healthcare magazine.

“This award belongs to each and every staff member, physician, department director, volunteer, senior manager and Board of Trustee member for their part in achieving this prestigious designation – not only the last two years but again this year,” said Bernie Mattingly, Cookeville Regional CEO.  “It takes all of us to make such a significant impact on our organization that we continually improve year over year for seven consecutive years.”

“I want to commend each and every person involved in the operation of our medical center,” added Mattingly.  “It’s a fact that not too many hospitals in the nation can claim this wonderful achievement,” added Mattingly.  As a matter of fact, only eight hospitals on this year’s list can boast of receiving this award for three consecutive years including Cookeville Regional.

This award represents a very significant achievement in that Cookeville Regional’s rate of hospital-wide improvement has been objectively measured and found to be faster and more consistent over five consecutive years than peers across the United States.  By achieving this award again this year, Cookeville Regional has shown steady improvement over seven years, showing consistency of improvement in clinical outcomes, safety, hospital efficiency, financial stability, and growth.

“This study identifies superior leadership, based on the success of hospital executive teams’ long-term strategies for strengthening performance,” said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs at Thomson Reuters. “These are true ’Good to Great’ leadership teams that have focused on improving quality, efficiency, use of evidence-based medicine, and financial stability in order to better serve their patients and communities.”

The Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals: Performance Improvement Leaders study analyzed acute care hospitals nationwide using detailed empirical performance data from years 2002 through 2006, including publicly available Medicare MedPAR data, Medicare cost reports, and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) outpatient data.

The study rated hospitals on eight factors — patient mortality, medical complications, patient safety, length of stay, expenses, profitability, cash-to-debt ratio, and use of evidence-based medicine. Researchers evaluated 2,867 short-term, acute care, non-federal hospitals grouped into five categories: major teaching hospitals, other teaching hospitals, large community hospitals, medium-sized community hospitals, and small community hospitals.

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More information on this study and other 100 Top Hospitals research is available at www.100tophospitals.com.