By DukeHealth.org staff

Duke University Hospital has received the 2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals®: National Benchmarks Award and the 2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals®: Everest Award for National Benchmarks.

The National Benchmarks Award recognizes hospitals that demonstrate superior clinical, operational, and financial performance.  

The 100 Top Hospitals National Balanced Scorecard evaluates a hospital's performance in nine areas: mortality, medical complications, patient safety, average length of stay, expenses, profitability, cash-to-debt ratio, patient satisfaction, and adherence to clinical standards of care.  

After evaluating 3,000 hospitals according to this scorecard, winners of the National Benchmarks Award were identified as the top 10 percent of hospitals striving to meet these benchmarks.

Duke's ability to couple excellent patient care, quality improvements, and financial stability helped earn this award.

Best of the Best

Duke University Hospital also received the Everest Award for National Benchmarks, which honors an elite group of the 2008 100 Top Hospitals national award winners. Given to only 23 hospitals, the Everest Award winners met all of the benchmarks in the study and did so at the fastest rates of long-term improvement. 

Earning the Everest Award is a testament to the leaders of Duke University Hospital who cultivated an environment that allowed performance improvements to grow quickly and consistently over five years. As a result, Duke raised the standard of care for other hospitals and set national benchmarks for excellence.  

Duke University Hospital is the only academic university in North Carolina to receive these awards.