Inova Fairfax Hospital Ranked 'One of America's Best Hospitals' by U.S. News & World Report

7/17/2003

From: Kathleen Thomas, 703-698-2811 or Janice Moore, 703-698-2270 both of Inova Health System

FALLS CHURCH, Va., July 17 -- U.S. News & World Report's annual hospital survey lists Inova Fairfax Hospital as "One of America's Best Hospitals." This is the seventh time in the past eight years Inova Fairfax Hospital has been included in the prestigious listing of top hospitals nationwide.

This year the hospital is ranked 27 among the nation's Top 50 hospitals in the category of Hormonal Disorders. Diabetes and thyroid conditions are among a number of hormonal disorders treated at The Inova Diabetes Center. The center, which provides comprehensive diabetes services to inpatients and outpatients of the hospital, is also a recipient of the prestigious certificate of recognition from the American Diabetes Association and provides educational and clinical services developed jointly with the International Diabetes Center.

The nurses and dietitians of the Inova Diabetes Center are certified diabetes educators. Clients not only learn about diabetes, they learn to make the lifestyle changes necessary to improve their health and quality of life now and for the future. The center's participants are successful: their blood sugars improve; they lose weight, and they exercise more regularly.

The services of the Inova Diabetes Center are offered at Inova hospitals/offices. When medically indicated, diabetes care is provided in the home through Inova VNA Home Health. Services include:

-- classes for managing type 2 diabetes

-- individual consultations with a nurse, nutritionist and/or family counselor

-- support groups and community programs

According to U.S. News & World Report, hospitals on the annual list excel partly because their doctors perform large numbers of difficult and risky procedures. The hospitals also tend to adhere more closely to advanced treatment guidelines, to incorporate new findings into patient care, and to conduct research that gives desperately ill patients more options.

"We're honored to be recognized as one the country's best hospitals," said Doug Cropper, vice president of Inova Health System and administrator, Inova Fairfax Hospital. "The award is a reflection of the high-level of expertise and skill of our physicians, nurses and staff who are dedicated to providing quality care to their patients everyday."

For most of the categories in the U.S. News & World Report's survey, hospitals must first meet one of three standards just to be considered: membership in the Council of Teaching Hospitals, affiliation with a medical school, or availability of at least nine of 17 specified items of medical technology. Following this review, the original pool of the more than 6,000 hospitals considered is reduced to just under 2,000 hospitals. In each specialty, a hospital must perform a given number of procedures or be cited by at least one physician in the past three years of U.S. News surveys.

Ranked hospitals received a score that equally weighs reputation, mortality and a group of care-related factors, e.g., nursing, including the ratio of registered nurses to patient beds. To determine reputation, 150 board-certified physicians were selected at random and asked to list up to five hospitals they consider the best in their specialty regardless of cost or location. The mortality ratios compared the number of expected deaths with the actual number of deaths of Medicare patients with specified conditions for the years 1999, 2000 and 2001. Most of the remaining data came from the American Hospital Association's 2001 annual survey of hospitals.

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Inova Health System is a not-for-profit health care system based in Northern Virginia that consists of hospitals and other health services including emergency and urgent care centers, home care, nursing homes, mental health and blood donor services, and wellness classes. Governed by a voluntary board of community members, Inova's mission is to provide quality care and improve the health of the diverse communities we serve.