St. Luke's University Health Network (SLUHN) has been named one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals in the Major Teaching Hospital category by IBM Watson Health^TM, formerly Truven Health Analytics®. This is the fourth year in a row and the sixth time overall that St. Luke's has achieved this honor.

            This recognition is one of the health industry's most prestigious honors. Unlike many other health care awards, it is based entirely on an independent, scientific review of objective data from government and other publicly available sources.

            St. Luke's is proud to be the only health care network in the region to have been named one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals in the Major Teaching Hospital category. In fact, not only is St. Luke's the only hospital in the region to have earned this recognition, it is one of only two hospitals, along with Hershey Medical Center, to have done so in all of Pennsylvania in 2018.

            "The 100 Top Hospitals award celebrates an organization's ability to thrive regardless of the constantly changing environment of today's health care industry and national imperatives that continue to demand the highest value of care. That means St. Luke's is one of the nation's best at providing the highest quality of care at lower cost," Rick Anderson, St. Luke's president and CEO, said.

            "This award is solely based on clinical outcomes, efficiencies of care and financial performance," Anderson added. "It is a credit to St. Luke's leadership team, the most talented and experienced team of health care administrators in the country, and to our outstanding physicians, nurses and other staff who day in and day out maintain an unwavering focus on quality and patient satisfaction."

            If other Lehigh Valley hospitals were able to match St. Luke's "100 Top Hospital" performance, Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton and surrounding communities would enjoy not only better health outcomes but also lower health care costs. Based on the results of this year's study, IBM Watson Health^TM extrapolates that if all Medicare inpatients nationwide received the same level of care as those treated in the award-winning facilities such as St. Luke's: More than 102,000 additional lives could be saved; More than 43,000 additional patients could be complication-free; More than $4.4 billion in inpatient costs could be saved; and approximately 200,000 fewer discharged patients would be readmitted within 30 days.

            "The country's best hospitals have proven that an unrelenting focus on quality, supported by constant measurement against peer performance benchmarks, can drive improved outcomes while reducing costs and growing profit margins," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president, 100 Top Hospitals Programs, IBM Watson Health. "Congratulations to this 25^th anniversary class of 100 Top Hospitals who have helped raise the bar for healthcare in the U.S. and improve the healthcare experiences of the people in their communities."

            The Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals® study uses independent and objective research to analyze hospital and health system performance in 11 areas, addressing: inpatient mortality; 30-day mortality rate; complications; core measures; 30-day risk-adjusted readmission rate; severity-adjusted average length of stay; mean emergency room throughput; inpatient expense per discharge; Medicare spend per beneficiary; adjusted operating profit margin; and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) score (patient rating of overall hospital performance). The study has been conducted annually since 1993.

            The winning hospitals were announced in the March 5^th edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.