By Duke Medicine News and Communications

Duke University Hospital has been selected to receive the 2007 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals Performance Improvement Leaders award.

The Performance Improvement Leaders award is designed to identify hospital leaders, including CEOs, executive teams, and boards that have instilled a culture of performance improvement across their organization. Performance Improvement Leaders (PI Leaders) have led their organizations to improve hospital-wide performance consistently, year after year, as a substantially faster rate than peers across the United States.

The 2007 PI Leaders made the following gains between 2002 and 2007:

• More than half significantly improved patient survival rates

• One-third decreased their average patient stay

• Fourteen percent showed significant improvement in patient safety

The Performance Improvement Leaders award is one of the highest tributes a management team can receive because the criteria used to determine the winners clearly shows the impact leadership has on improving value to patients and the community.