UAB Medicine Earns Recognition from Vizient for Quality Improvements

UAB Medicine was recognized by Vizient Inc. for making significant improvements in its year-over-year rankings and scoring in the top quartile on the Vizient Quality and Accountability Scorecard.

UAB Medicine ranks No. 11 out of 101 participating comprehensive academic medical centers across the country in the 2021 Vizient Quality and Accountability Scorecard. Academic medical centers (AMCs) receiving this recognition rose at least 20 positions from the prior year in the annual Vizient Quality and Accountability Ranking and scored in the top 25.

“There is no substitute for quality, especially in health care,” says UAB Health System CEO Will Ferniany, PhD. “UAB Medicine’s goal with our AMC21 strategic plan is to be in the top 10 in Vizient quality. With the efforts of our faculty, staff, and with our quality leaders, we are about to reach our goal. Reaching No. 11 is a milestone that we can all take pride in achieving.”

UAB Health System Chief Quality Officer Loring Rue, MD, agrees.

“Our significant improvement in the Vizient Quality and Accountability Scorecard ranking is a direct reflection of many efforts across the organization and by our department-aligned quality officers,” Dr. Rue says. “Achieving a rank of No. 11 out of over 100 other comprehensive academic medical centers – in spite of a pandemic – is an accomplishment that should be recognized.”

About the Vizient Scorecard

Vizient is the country’s largest member-owned health care services company. It provides solutions to help providers improve patient outcomes and lower costs, and it collects data that help track those improvements.

Since 2005, the Vizient Quality and Accountability Scorecard has ranked quality and safety performance across a wide variety of patient populations. The rankings measure performance in five domains: safety, mortality, effectiveness, efficiency, and patient-centeredness. Nearly all of the nation’s academic medical centers participate.

The rankings reflect measures from the Vizient Clinical Database and include performance in core measures data, the HCAHPS survey (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare, Providers, and Systems), and the Centers for Disease Control’s National Healthcare Safety Network for work spanning July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021.

Benjamin Taylor, MD, UAB Health System senior vice president for Clinical Effectiveness and associate chief quality officer, says the improvement was due to consistent hard work.

“We saw a great improvement through focused efforts to help Vizient better understand and account for specific patient populations,” Dr. Taylor says. “Overcoming this hurdle will help us focus our efforts on new areas of opportunity as we continue striving to enhance clinical performance, quality, and safety.”

UAB Medicine uses the Quality and Accountability Scorecard to provide a global measure of many of our initiatives, highlight year-over-year performance to help us target specific opportunities for improvement, and compare ourselves to other similar hospitals.

To learn more about our quality and patient safety initiatives, visit uabmedicine.org/quality.

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