Winthrop-University Hospital announced today that HealthGrades, the nation's most trusted source of health care provider information, has named it a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence(tm) for fourth consecutive year. This prestigious distinction places Winthrop-University Hospital among the Top 5% of hospitals nationwide for clinical performance.

HealthGrades Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence study, released today, objectively identifies those hospitals with the best overall clinical performance across all 26 medical diagnoses and procedures that the organization rates. These 263 top-performing hospitals represent only 5% of the nation's hospitals and each is designated as a HealthGrades Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence(tm).

"Winthrop-University Hospital can be proud of the contributions of its physicians, nurses and staff in achieving outstanding patient care," said Kristin Reed, MPH, Health- Grades vice president of hospital ratings and author of the study. "The Mineola community is fortunate to have access to some of the highest quality hospital care in the nation."

"Winthrop-University Hospital is committed to excellence in patient care, quality and safety, and is proud to be recognized by HealthGrades as the only Hospital in Nassau County to be named a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence for four years in a row," said John F. Collins, Winthrop's President & CEO. "This distinction is another example of our continued commitment to providing superior medical care to every individual that comes to Winthrop for healthcare and healing."

Unlike other hospital quality studies, HealthGrades evaluates hospitals solely on clinical outcomes: risk-adjusted mortality and inhospital complications. HealthGrades' analysis is based on approximately 40 million Medicare discharges for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010. Using these top-performing hospitals as a benchmark in this year's HealthGrades study, HealthGrades quantifies the impact of differences in hospital quality in terms of lives lost and unexpected complications.

The HealthGrades study found that:

• Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence (Top 5% in the nation) such as Winthrop - University Hospital outperform all other hospitals across all of the 17 mortality cohorts and six of nine complication cohorts studied from 2008 through 2010.

• Specifically, Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence had a 30.07% lower riskadjusted mortality rate and a 1.86% lower risk-adjusted inhospital complication rate among Medicare beneficiaries compared to all other hospitals.

• In fact, if all hospitals performed at the level of Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence, 165,704 Medicare lives could potentially have been saved and 6,800 Medicare inhospital complications could potentially have been avoided.