The Austin Medical Center has always ranked highly in the opinions of Austinites, and now they have proof it’s as good as they think it is.

Fridaym April 2, 1999

The Austin Medical Center has always ranked highly in the opinions of Austinites, and now they have proof it’s as good as they think it is.

The hospital operation of the medical center – a part of Mayo Health System – was recently ranked in the top 50 of the 1,900 hospitals of its kind in the nation.

"We had heard rumors of this a month or so ago," said Tim Johnson, president of the medical center, as well as a family practitioner at the facility. "Finally, we sent in for the study so we could see for ourselves."

Once the study arrived, they found it to be true. The medical center’s hospital had been named one of the top 50 institutes of its kind – that is, non-teaching hospitals – in not one but two categories. The categories judged were financial stability, quality and cost. AMC came out with great marks in both quality and cost.

"Only four other non-teaching hospitals were rated in more than one category," Johnson said, "and none were ranked in all three."

The people making this judgment were the Center for Healthcare Industry Performance Studies. Measures of quality included mortality and length of stay. Cost measures used included charge per case, cost per case and overhead. They considered the years of 1995-1997, and each hospital needed to have seen at least 1,000 Medicare discharges in 1997. Hospitals were broken into teaching, minor teaching or non-teaching.

Small hospitals outperformed large hospitals by and large, the study found, which means a hospital like AMC tends to outshine the larger hospitals found in metropolitan areas like the Twin Cities.

Johnson said this study was a reflection of the staff of the hospital.

"Everybody works hard here," he said, "and everybody has had stress with the building project, the computer switches and the large volume of patients we see here."

The AMC building has been undergoing renovations and improvements for more than two years now, which has limited parking not just for patients but for hospital employees. Halls are open one day, closed the next. Hospital officials have promised the results of this work will be more than worth it.

Johnson said the hospital was going to have a celebration sometime soon.

"This is a real tribute to the hard work and dedication of our staff," he said proudly.