Providence in Everett enjoys national attention for its high-quality, low-cost health care model

Published 5:39 pm Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Providence Regional Medical Center’s balanced health care model was featured in a six-page Business Week article in January, just the latest in a stack of clippings compiled from local and national news media.

In recent months, the Everett hospital’s health care accomplishments also have attracted attention from USA Today, the Associated Press and others. CEO David Brooks has played a prominent role in developing those successes and has been invited twice to Washington, D.C., to tell the PRMC story to Institute for Health Care Improvement conferences.

When Business Week senior writer Catherine Arnst asked the Institute for Health Care Improvement where to find a hospital providing high-quality, lower-cost health care services, she was immediately referred to PRMC. She and Seattle photographer Brian Smale spent a day at PRMC in November gathering material for the article.

Highlights of the Jan. 7 Business Week article — “Hospitals: Radical Cost Surgery” — noted that PRMC has one of the nation’s few “single stay” wards, where heart surgery patients recover in their room and monitoring and therapy equipment are brought to the room rather than moving the patient. The result: shorter hospital stays and fewer infections.

Also, while the majority of American hospitals are losing money on Medicare patients, PRMC manages to break even, even though Medicare payments here are far lower than elsewhere in the nation.

The article noted that PRMC’s multiple awards for high performance and cost reduction have placed it in “among the top 5 percent of all U.S. hospitals … high quality at a low price.” Arnst also wrote that PRMC “tries to standardize best practices whenever possible” and that the effort is aided by suggestions from the hospital’s employees, including administrative and medical staff.

Providence accomplishes all of this along with writing off $16 million in unpaid bills, “more than any other Washington hospital except a public facility in Seattle,” according to the article, which gives credit to the moral mission of the Sisters of Providence to minister to the poor.

“Everything we do has to uphold our core values,” Brooks told Business Week.

PRMC’s entire system is open for improvement suggestions, an environment that encourages cost saving and new ways of improving patient care, Arnst wrote.

For example, Dr. James Brevig, director of cardiac surgery, implemented a new policy of reducing the amount of blood that transfusion patients receive, resulting in shorter stays, fewer infections and a $4.5 million savings for the hospital’s bottom line over several years.

Another well-publicized accomplishment was the recent recognition by HealthGrades, a national rating service, which for the third consecutive year honored Providence Regional Medical Center with its 2009 Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical Excellence. The Everett hospital is the only one Washington to win this award for the past three years, which places it in the top 5 percent of all hospitals in the nation for overall clinical performance.

PRMC has also been ranked No. 1 in Washington for cardiology, stroke treatment, critical care, and general surgery; ranked among the top 10 percent of hospitals in the nation for cardiology two years in a row; and also ranked No. 1 in Washington for overall cardiac and cardiology services two years in a row (2008 and 2009).

Providence’s Web site also links to numerous other media sources with articles about the hospital, including The Herald, Kaiser Health News, New America Foundation, Seattle Metropolitan magazine, Seattle magazine, KING 5 News and MSNBC.