DALLAS – Nov. 11, 2015 – UT Southwestern Medical Center has received two major patient satisfaction awards from Press Ganey, a national consulting firm specializing in health care performance.

The awards – the Pinnacle of Excellence Award and the Guardian of Excellence Award – recognize Zale Lipshy University Hospital, the home of UT Southwestern's Comprehensive Stroke Program.

Zale Lipshy University Hospital

This marks the third consecutive year that Zale Lipshy has won the Pinnacle of Excellence Award, formerly called the Beacon of Excellence Award, which recognizes leading health care facilities that achieve and maintain high levels of excellence in patient satisfaction for multiple years. About 40 organizations receive this award annually.

The Guardian of Excellence Award, a nationally recognized symbol of achievement in health care, honors organizations that have sustained performance in the top 5 percent of all Press Ganey clients over a year’s period in clinical quality, patient experience, employee engagement, or physician engagement. Zale Lipshy received the award for outstanding performance in clinical quality.

Every year since 2011, UT Southwestern has received awards from Press Ganey, which partners with more than 22,000 health care facilities to measure and improve patient experience.

“These awards highlight UT Southwestern’s commitment to patient satisfaction and clinical quality, which are at the heart of the health care we provide each day,” said Dr. John Warner, Vice President and CEO of University Hospitals at UT Southwestern. “The awards reflect the dedication of our caregivers to ensuring the highest quality patient care and experience,” added Dr. Warner, who holds the Jim and Norma Smith Distinguished Chair for Interventional Cardiology, and the Audre and Bernard Rapoport Chair in Cardiovascular Research.

Dr. Bruce Meyer, Executive Vice President for Health System Affairs, added, “The Press Ganey awards are especially meaningful because they represent a consistent focus on the total experience of patients and their families. We are honored by the recognition, and appreciate the contributions of the entire staff of Zale Lipshy University Hospital, which made this recognition possible.”  Dr. Meyer holds the T.C. Lupton Family Professorship in Patient Care, in Honor of Dr. John Dowling McConnell and Dr. David Andrew Pistenmaa.

The leaders of Zale Lipshy developed strategies for success based on patient comments, employee engagement surveys, and site visits to other high-performing hospitals. As a result of this input, the patient experience has been enhanced, including making the hospital environment a peaceful, quiet place; anticipating the needs of patients and their families; resolving problems directly; and placing a high priority on the confidentiality of patients, families, and colleagues. To achieve these goals, the hospital launched a multiyear strategy that included reducing overhead paging, instituting daily hospital huddles, establishing an etiquette policy, reviewing patients’ feedback during rounds, and reviewing special needs for patients to ensure better-informed hand-offs between nurses and other caregivers as shifts change.

The Press Ganey awards follow another honor recently received by UT Southwestern’s William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital, which opened in December 2014. Last month, Clements University Hospital received a national Rising Star Quality Leadership award from the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) for the hospital’s quality and safety efforts. The award recognizes significant improvements in ranking in the UHC's annual Quality and Accountability Study, which identifies exemplary performance in patient safety, mortality, clinical effectiveness, and equity of care among academic medical centers. UT Southwestern now ranks within in the top 20.

About UT Southwestern Medical Center

UT Southwestern, one of the premier academic medical centers in the nation, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution’s faculty includes many distinguished members, including six who have been awarded Nobel Prizes since 1985. The faculty of more than 2,700 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide medical care in 40 specialties to about 92,000 hospitalized patients and oversee approximately 2.1 million outpatient visits a year.

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Media Contact: Deborah Wormser
214-648-3404