(Press-News.org) LOS ANGELES — Keck Hospital of USC has been named a top performer in Vizient Inc.’s 2025 Bernard A. Birnbaum, MD, Quality Leadership award, recognizing the hospital’s excellence in delivering high-quality care.
This is the third year in a row the hospital has been named a top performer, the highest possible recognition. Keck Hospital ranked 12th out of 118 comprehensive academic medical centers nationwide.
“Keck Hospital puts quality care above all else, and being recognized as a top performer validates the hospital’s mission to deliver safe, effective and personalized care,” said Stephanie Hall, MD, chief medical officer of Keck Medical Center of USC, which includes Keck Hospital. “Each year, the hospital continues to rank higher in the Vizient standings, and we are thankful to the entire staff for their unrelenting pursuit of excellence.”
Vizient, a leading health care performance improvement company, annually recognizes top-performing hospitals as measured by its Quality and Accountability Study.
The organization evaluates institutions in six domains: safety, mortality, effectiveness, efficiency, patient centeredness and variation in care. Of special note is the hospital’s ranking in patient centeredness, which measures patients' perceptions of their hospital experience, in which it received a near perfect score.
“This recognition is one of the most prestigious in health care because of Vizient’s thorough methodology. Ranking highly in all categories makes us one of the safest, most patient-centered hospitals in the country,” said Marty Sargeant, MBA, CEO of Keck Medical Center.
The study factors in data from Vizient and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as a national survey of patients’ perspectives of hospital care known as the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey (HCAHPS).
Earlier this year, Keck Hospital earned a Spring 2025 “A” Hospital Safety Grade from The Leapfrog Group, an independent national nonprofit watchdog focused on patient safety. This is the 10th “A” grade the hospital has received since 2019.
“Keck Hospital’s top performer status is just one of the many recognitions Keck Medicine of USC has recently received for patient safety across its four hospitals and outpatient settings, and is a true reflection of the health system’s commitment to the highest standards of care,” said Tom Bates, MBA, RN, chief quality officer for Keck Medicine.
The recognition period spans July 1, 2024 – June 30, 2025.
Keck Hospital, a 343-bed acute care hospital, is part of Keck Medicine, the University of Southern California’s medical enterprise.
###
For more information about Keck Medicine of USC, please visit news.KeckMedicine.org.
END
Tulane University researchers have developed an enhanced CRISPR-based tuberculosis test that works with a simple tongue swab, a potential breakthrough that could allow easier, community-based screenings for the world’s deadliest infectious disease.
Current TB tests rely on sputum, mucus collected from the lungs and lower respiratory system. While rich in TB bacteria required for testing, collecting sputum is difficult, making it inefficient for large-scale community testing. Sputum testing is also unfeasible in about 25% of symptomatic cases and nearly 90% of asymptomatic cases, a gap which contributes to an estimated 4 million tuberculosis cases going undiagnosed ...
Study participants wore a necklace, wristband and body camera to capture real-world eating behaviors
Seeing overeating patterns in the data ‘felt like turning on a light in a room we've all been stumbling through for decades’
Findings lay groundwork for personalized overeating interventions that feel ‘less like a prescription and more like a partnership’
CHICAGO --- What if your smart watch could sense when you're about to raid the fridge, and gently steer you toward a healthier choice instead?
Northwestern University scientists are bringing that vision closer to reality with a groundbreaking lifestyle medicine program that uses three wearable ...
Plastic pollution represents a global environmental challenge, and once in the environment plastic can fragment into smaller and smaller pieces.
A new study shows for the first time that some of the tiniest particles found in the environment can be absorbed into the edible sections of crops during the growing process.
The research used radishes to demonstrate, for the first time, that nanoplastics – some measuring as little as one millionth of a centimetre in diameter – can enter the roots, before spreading and accumulating into the edible parts of the plant.
The researchers say the findings reveal another potential pathway for humans and animals to unintentionally consume ...
A new artificial intelligence model found previously undetected signals in routine heart tests that strongly predict which patients will suffer potentially deadly complications after surgery. The model significantly outperformed risk scores currently relied upon by doctors.
The federally-funded work by Johns Hopkins University researchers, which turns standard and inexpensive test results into a potentially life-saving tool, could transform decision-making and risk calculation for both patients and surgeons.
“We ...
Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have developed and validated a new tool that could help GPs detect ovarian cancer earlier and improve patient outcomes cost-effectively.
Ovatools combines results from a standard blood test which measures the levels of a protein Cancer Antigen 125 (CA125) with a woman’s age, to provide a personalised risk score for ovarian cancer. Two new studies, funded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), analysed data from over 340,000 women across England. They show that this approach is accurate, especially for women aged over 50 and represents good value ...
GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic can be a lifeline for people with diabetes — helping stabilize blood glucose and lose weight which contributes to diabetes complications. But not everyone benefits equally. Scientists monitoring 92 individuals with diabetes in Japan over their first year of taking GLP-1 drugs found that people’s reasons for overeating may affect the success of these therapies. Individuals who overeat in response to the sight or smell of tasty food were most likely to respond well to the drugs in the long term, whereas individuals who overeat for emotional reasons ...
PHILADELPHIA – Today, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) released the 15th edition of its annual Cancer Progress Report. A cornerstone of the AACR’s educational and advocacy efforts, this comprehensive report provides the latest statistics on cancer incidence, mortality, and survivorship and highlights how federal investments in basic, translational, and clinical cancer research and cancer-related population sciences have led to impressive scientific advances that are improving health and saving lives.
The AACR Cancer Progress Report 2025 features a special section that explains how advances in understanding blood cancers over the past decade have contributed ...
Kyoto, Japan -- Online platforms promise connection, yet the social comparison, digital surveillance, and public criticism they foster can also heighten emotional instability. Recently, these platforms have even intensified global challenges by fueling misinformation-driven unrest and deepening emotional divides. These dynamics have been linked to rising levels of distress, fear, and trauma, often shaped by collective outrage and transient narratives.
While current psychiatry offers various approaches to address individual distress, the field remains relatively under-equipped to understand ...
A team of researchers, led by the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute), explored the cellular and molecular interactions revealing how lymph nodes play a crucial role in the fight against chronic infection and cancer.
The research, published across two papers in Nature Immunology, showed that lymph nodes provide the right environment for stem-like T cells, an important type of immune cell, to survive, multiply and produce killer cells that can fight cancer or viruses. In other immune organs, such as the spleen, these cells don’t develop ...
In a world first, researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have successfully developed a resonant tunnel diode (RTD) that operates at room temperature made entirely from Group IV semiconductor materials. The development of an RTD that operates at room temperature means the device could be deployed at scale for next-generation wireless communication systems. The use of only non-toxic Group IV semiconductor materials also supports more sustainable manufacturing processes.
This research marks a pivotal step toward terahertz wireless components that deliver unprecedented speed and data handling capacity with superior energy efficiency. “Compared ...