Avera McKennan Hospital Again Named One of the Nation's 100 Top Hospitals by Thomson Healthcare

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (March 17, 2008) – Avera McKennan Hospital and University Health Center was today named one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals® by Thomson Healthcare, a leading provider of information and solutions to improve the cost and quality of health care.

The prestigious national award recognizes hospitals that have achieved excellence in clinical outcomes, patient safety, financial performance, and efficiency. This is the second year in a row Avera McKennan has been recognized with this honor. The Avera Heart Hospital received this honor a few months ago in the specialty hospital category for excellence in cardiovascular care.

The 2007 Thomson 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success study appears in the March 17 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.

According to the study, the highest performance levels in patient safety were achieved by the 100 hospitals in the study that delivered the highest balanced performance across quality, efficiency, and financial stability. If all hospitals had performed at the level of these leading hospitals on the eight patient safety measures studied, they would have saved $253 million and 7,914 lives during the time period the study examined.

The 15th edition of the Thomson 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success study uses a balanced scorecard approach and scores hospitals according to eight key organization-wide measures: risk-adjusted mortality, risk-adjusted complications, patient safety composite, average core measures scores, severity-adjusted average length of stay, expense per adjusted discharge, profit from operations, and cash-to-debt ratio.

More information on this study and other 100 Top Hospitals research is available at www.100tophospitals.com.