Central N.M. Hospitals Lauded for Top-Notch Care
Published Mar 24, 2006
Presbyterian Hospital is the largest acute-care hospital in Albuquerque and part of Presbyterian Healthcare Services. Above: Albuquerque Regional Medical Center is part of the Lovelace Sandia Health System, whose facilities cover a five-county area.
When Central New Mexico residents need health care, their choices are downright award-winning.
Presbyterian Healthcare Services, Lovelace Sandia Health System and the hospitals of the University of New Mexico all offer world-class services, while each has carved a niche in certain care specialties.
In 2005, Presbyterian Healthcare Services earned the state’s highest quality recognition, called the Zia Award.
The Zia is annually presented by Quality New Mexico, a nonprofit organization chartered by the governor to tout performance excellence.
Jim Hinton, Presbyterian president and CEO, says the award was a tremendous achievement.
“We want to give our patients and members health care that is more efficient, more reliable, safer and costs less,” he says.
Hinton is leading the charge at Presbyterian, New Mexico’s largest health-care provider, to institute Malcolm Baldrige quality improvement principles across the sprawling system. The Presbyterian network includes eight hospitals, with two in Albuquerque.
When it comes to geographic coverage, Lovelace Sandia facilities blanket a five-county area with Albuquerque at its center.
“The whole notion is to be responsive to patients’ needs when they need health care versus when it’s convenient for the delivery of health care,” says Ron Stern, the health system’s president and chief executive officer.
Lovelace Sandia boasts five hospitals, more than a dozen primary care centers with some offering urgent care – and several area laboratories. The system’s hospitals include a rehabili tation hospital and a facility dedicated to women’s health.
Lovelace Sandia was created in 2003 when Nashville, Tenn.-based Ardent Health Services bought the St. Joseph Healthcare System and Lovelace Health Systems.
“We see a tremendous opportunity to build a system that provides easy access to the highest quality of health care with excellent customer service,” Stern says. “We’re still consolidating the best of both of those two systems, working to create a new culture driven by quality and pushing the notion of services to the patients as opposed to having patients come to our facility.”
In 2005, that push for quality paid off, when Medicare’s new Hospital Compare Web site named Lovelace Medical Center as a local leader in the care of some serious conditions such as heart attack and heart failure. In fact, Albuquerque hospitals overall exceed national averages, according to Hospital Compare.
Consistently ranked among the nation’s best academic medical centers, the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center is anchored by UNM Hospital in Albuquerque.
The primary teaching hospital for the university’s School of Medicine, UNM Hospital was named in 2005 as one of the Top 15 Major Teaching Performance Improvement Hospitals by Solucient, an independent company that tracks hospital performance.
UNM Hospital operates the state’s only Level I Trauma Center and is home of the renowned UNM Children’s Hos pital, where 40,000 of the state’s smallest patients are cared for each year.
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
Photo by Brian McCord
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