Iowa’s hospitals are doing a good job in meeting national quality standards, but only two made the cut to be listed as “Top Performer” hospitals, according to a studyreleased this week by a national accrediting group. 

But for that matter, some of the most prestigious medical centers in the country, including Mayo Clinic and The Johns Hopkins Hospital, didn’t make the top performers list either.

The report, “Improving America’s Hospitals: The Joint Commission Annual Report on Quality and Safety 2012,” ncludes 620 hospitals that “are leading the way nationally in using evidence-based care processes closely linked to positive patient outcomes,” the commission said in a release. The second annual report summarizes the performance of more than 3,300 hospitals that are accredited by the commission.

Just two Iowa hospitals – Mercy Medical Center in Clinton and Allen Memorial Hospital in Waterloo – were listed among the 620 Top Performer hospitals, which represented 18 percent of the accredited hospitals reviewed.  The 620 hospitals receiving the top rating represented a 50 percent increase from the first report in 2011, with 244 of those hospitals making the list a second time.

The report tracked performance measures related to eight areas of care:  heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgical care, children’s asthma care, inpatient psychiatric services, venous thromboembolism care and stroke care. Each Top Performer hospital achieved a composite score of 95 percent or higher, and exceeded 95 percent performance on each of 43 accountability measures for which it reported data.

Though the report did not provide a composite score for each hospital or a statewide average, the majority of scores for Iowa hospitals appeared to be in the middle to high 90 percent range, indicating that those hospitals performed those quality procedures the vast majority of the time.  

Iowa Hospital Association spokesman Scott McIntyre said the report should be viewed as one of many tools available to patients to evaluate their hospitals. They should also talk to their doctors, who are likely the most familiar with the hospitals. A searchable database of scores from the report is available at www.qualitycheck.org.

“There’s a lot of information out there,” he said. “They should look at the big picture and see how their hospital is doing in a variety of measures.”