Garden Park Medical Center has been named the top hospital in Mississippi by the Lown Institute, a healthcare think tank founded by cardiologist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Bernard Lown, in its Lown Institute Hospitals Index.
The new index honors hospitals for both their excellence in serving individual patients and for their role in advancing equity in their communities. It is the first ranking of its kind to include metrics like inclusivity, pay equity, avoiding overuse and civic leadership in evaluating hospital performance. Garden Park was the highest-rated hospital of the 56 facilities in Mississippi included in the study.
“At a time when communities are relying on them like never before, hospitals must rethink what it means to be great,” said Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute. “COVID-19 highlights how hospitals are essential community partners for anyone in need. To be great, however, a hospital cannot only provide care that’s high in quality. It must also deliver value and advance equality. Our index is designed to help them do just that.”
The Lown Institute Hospitals Index shows how nearly 3,300 U.S. hospitals compare on 42 performance indicators. The measures fall under three categories:
- Civic Leadership, which assesses a commitment to equity, inclusion and community health;
- Value of Care, which measures use of unnecessary services; and
- Patient Outcomes, which evaluates patient safety, satisfaction and clinical outcomes.
“We are thrilled to receive this recognition, as we know our responsibility to our community extends beyond these hospital walls,” said Randy Rogers, Garden Park’s CEO. “We work hard to not just provide high-quality care, but also improve life for everyone on the Gulf Coast. It is wonderful for our staff and physicians to see that effort validated with this ranking.”
This is the latest quality accolade earned by Garden Park, which earlier this year was awarded its fourth-straight “A” in The Leapfrog Group’s Spring 2020 Hospital Safety Grade.
The Lown Index results are available at LownHospitalsIndex.org, where people can compare hospitals based on location, hospital type and metric. It is also the data source for the Washington Monthly’s “Best Hospitals for America” issue, released simultaneously.
The index uses data from a wide variety of sources, including the 100 percent Medicare claims datasets
(MEDPAR and outpatient), Internal Revenue Service pulled from Community Benefit Insight database,
Healthcare Cost Report Information System administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Securities and Exchange Commission filings, public records, Bureau of Labor Statistics and other databases.
For more information about Garden Park and its services, please visit GardenParkMedical.com.
