Quality of Patient Care

UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital are committed to providing the safest and highest quality care to patients. To continually refine the care we provide, we monitor and measure the treatments our patients receive and evaluate our performance against our own rigorous standards as well as industry benchmarks.

At UCSF, we define quality as:

• Superior care and outcomes
• Outstanding patient safety
• Excellent service and patient satisfaction

As an academic medical center affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco, we're leaders in treating — as well as preventing — the most complex conditions from pediatric heart defects to Parkinson's disease. We also strive to better serve patients, to improve the health care experience no matter what the disease. For example, our doctors created a new area of expertise called "hospitalists," the doctors who coordinate the sometimes mind-boggling array of treatments a hospital patient may receive, and we're pioneers in palliative care, the treatment of seriously and terminally ill patients.

• See our video, "Road to Excellence," about patient safety and quality of care.

Our progress in maintaining the highest standards of care is reflected in our accreditations, rankings and activities:

• Received full accreditation from the Joint Commission, a nonprofit agency that evaluates and accredits health care facilities nationwide, in January 2007.
• Ranked in the top 10 for overall quality — among premier academic medical centers nationwide — by the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC). Named No. 1 by UHC for serving a diverse patient population in terms of gender, race and socioeconomic status and eighth in patient-centered care.
• Consistently ranked one of the nation's top 10 hospitals in the annual ranking by U.S. News & World Report.
• Joined the ongoing Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) campaign, called Saving 5 Million Lives to make hospitals and clinics safer environments for patients.

Today, you have many choices for where you receive health care. It's important that you have the knowledge to make informed decisions about where to seek the best care for your condition. Because these health care decisions can be complicated, we plan to add to this information over the next several months to help you evaluate the numerous rankings and surveys and help explain what UCSF Medical Center is doing to monitor and improve its own performance.

There are many factors to consider when reviewing these surveys. When was the data compiled? Is the information current? Academic medical centers, like UCSF Medical Center, often care for the most seriously ill — or terminally ill — patients as well newborns and the elderly who are transferred from community hospitals that don't have the resources and expertise to care for these patients. Do the surveys take into consideration these factors when evaluating hospitals?

For more information on choosing a hospital, see information provided by calhospitalcompare.org, a service of the California Healthcare Foundation.

If you have any questions regarding our performance or would like any other information about us, contact Quality Improvement:

• UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital — (415) 353-4103
• UCSF Medical Center — (415) 353-1989

Other Resources

• California Hospital Assessment and Reporting Taskforce
• Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
• Hospital Quality Alliance
• Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)
• Joint Commission
• Leapfrog Group
• Medicare Patient Satisfaction Survey
• National Quality Forum
• Office of Statewide Health Planning & Development (OSHPD)
• Quality Check
• U.S. News & World Report — America's Best Hospitals