Glendale Adventist Medical Center (GAMC) has been selected as July’s Fire Starter of the Month by Studer Group, an international outcomes-based healthcare consulting firm that works with hundreds of hospitals and healthcare organizations to improve clinical, service and operational outcomes.

The Fire Starter of the Month is a prestigious award that Studer Group bestows upon hospitals that act as premier examples of quality healthcare. The award reflects an overall passion and commitment to creating a culture of excellence where patients feel confident about their care, physicians enjoy practicing medicine and employees are proud to be part of the organization.     Fire Starters ignite the flame of service and caring for others that guides and supports the organization and results in measurable positive outcomes.

“Our journey to world-class excellence, which we call ‘Performance at a Higher Level,’ began with the Studer Group in May 2012,” said Kevin A. Roberts, RN, FACHE, president/CEO of GAMC. “With Studer’s coaching and God’s blessing, our leadership team has steadily been ‘hardwiring’ best practices such as AIDET, hourly nurse rounding and leadership rounding, into the daily culture at Glendale Adventist. The results have been immediate and dramatic.”

In the early part of 2012, the hospital’s patient experience scores were significantly behind state and national averages. In the fourth quarter of 2012, after the journey with Studer began, hospital scores skyrocketed into the 70th, 80th and even up to the 100th percentiles. The hospital has sustained, and improved upon, these results through the first quarter of 2013.

“In the 13-year history of Studer Group, we have never seen a hospital achieve such rapid improvement of their HCAHPS patient experience results as what we’ve seen at Glendale Adventist Medical Center in the last nine months,” said Quint Studer.

“Our journey to becoming a world-class hospital is not over, but thanks to the efforts of our associates, physicians and leadership teams, we are well on our way and are deeply honored to receive the Healthcare Organization of the Month award,” added Roberts.

Glendale Adventist Medical Center is a non-profit, 515-bed acute care facility in Glendale that has been a part of the greater Los Angeles community for more than 108 years. In that time it has received numerous certifications and awards.