By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – Shelby Baptist Medical Center has been recognized as one of the top hospitals in the nation in its efforts to care for heart attack and heart failure victims, treat pneumonia and provide surgical care.

The Joint Commission, which accredits health care organizations throughout the nation, named Shelby Baptist, along with other Baptist Health System facilities Citizens Medical Center in Talladega and Walker Medical Center in Jasper, a “Top performer on key quality measures” on Nov. 13. This is the second consecutive year Shelby Baptist has been named a top performer.

The top performer status “is recognized nationwide as a symbol reflecting an organization’s commitment to meeting high-quality performance standards,” according to information from Baptist Health Systems.

The top performer program recognizes accredited hospitals for attaining excellence in quality measures in four criteria: Research, proximity, accuracy and adverse effects, which are designed to produce the greatest positive impact on patient outcomes, according to the hospital.

The program is based on data reported in the previous year about evidence-based clinical processes that are shown to be the best treatments for certain conditions, including heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgical care, children’s asthma, inpatient psychiatric services, stroke, venous thromboembolism and immunization.

The criteria for the top performer 2013 program includes a three step process: Achieving cumulative performance of 95 percent or above across all reported accountability measures; Achieving performance of 95 percent or above on all accountability measures with at least 30 denominator cases and having at least one core measure set that has a composite rate of 95 percent or above, according to Shelby Baptist Executive Director of Quality Management Lori Quinn.

The top performer honor came a few months after Shelby Baptist and other Baptist Health System facilities received the top safety score awarded by The Leapfrog Group’s Hospital Safety Score program. The group, which is a non-profit organization seeking to improve safety, quality and affordability of health care, awarded Shelby Baptist, along with Walker and Princeton medical centers, with an “A” grade for the facilities’ efforts to prevent medical errors, accidents and infections.