The Significance of Being a Top 100 Hospital — Again

How important is it to northern Michigan residents that Munson Medical Center has been named a Top 100 Hospital for the seventh time?

First, it means that people who live here don’t have to travel out of the region to receive the best care in the nation. They can get it right here. It means that patients at Munson are safer, have fewer complications, and generally have better outcomes than patients elsewhere.

The Top 100 designation also means that the hospital is well-managed and financially stable, ensuring the community that Munson will be here when its services are needed in the years to come.

The 100 Top Hospitals in the U.S. is an annual evaluation prepared by Solucient, an Illinois-based health care information company. Munson is in an elite group of six hospitals in America that has been named to the Top 100 list seven times.

“To rank in the Top 100 once is a significant accomplishment, but to achieve it as often as we have is an outstanding tribute to our staff and our physician partners who provide outstanding services to our patients,” said MMC President and CEO, Ed Ness.

“I’m very proud that we’ve been able to maintain our award-winning quality care,” Ness said. “It is even more significant that we have also been able to once again achieve the financial performance required to rank in the Top 100.”

Kyle Carr, MD, chief of the hospital’s 302-member medical staff, concurred. “We have recruited and retained an excellent medical staff,” he said. “We work with our colleagues to continuously raise the level of care at the hospital and to ensure a wide range of specialties are represented. The Top 100 designation reinforces that you do not have to leave northern Michigan for excellent care.”

The information used for the study comes from Solucient’s extensive hospital database and from Medicare reports. The database includes more than 6,000 acute care and specialty hospitals in the United States — virtually every general acute care hospital with 25 or more beds.