At St. Luke’s Medical Center it is our goal to provide safe, effective, high-quality healthcare for every patient.

We encourage our patients to take an active role in their healthcare, and we believe they should make informed decisions about the physicians and hospitals they trust to provide that care.

Serving Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun since 1907, St. Luke’s Medical Center is a 235-bed tertiary hospital with a long tradition of leadership in emerging medical technology. From the first open-heart surgery performed in Phoenix in 1960 to the development of artificial joints St. Luke’s has a legacy of compassionate care coupled with medical innovation. Dedicated to this mission are more than 500 physicians, 600 employees and 100 volunteers.
St. Luke’s Medical Center is proud of the honors it has earned for providing quality care, especially for the treatment of heart disease.

SLMC recently performed the Southwest’s first open heart surgery using the da Vinci robotic system surgical device. (Read the news release)

SLMC is fully accredited by the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and we have met all national patient safety standards. We received a Quality Award for being one of three hospitals to participate in the public reporting pilot.

SLMC voluntarily provides data for seventeen core measures of quality to the Center for Medicare Services (CMS) and the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). These core measures evaluate how hospitals provide care related to heart attacks, heart failure, and pneumonia. Through a new CMS website called Hospital Compare!, you can see how our hospital compares to other hospitals on these core measures.

Today, a number of different agencies report information about hospital quality on the Internet. These websites can be a good source of information for healthcare consumers and many of them provide reliable data that can help consumers make informed decisions about where to seek care. But, there are some things that should be considered in reviewing these Internet reports.

Is the information current?
Most data reported on the Internet is historical data. It could be years old, or just a matter of months old. If the data is not recent, it may not accurately reflect the care being provided by a hospital today.

What is included in the data?
In some cases, data may be about only one hospital service or even just a small part of the treatment provided for a certain condition. For example, it is important to educate heart attack patients who are smokers about the health dangers associated with smoking, however, that is just one part of effective treatment for heart disease.

In some cases, data may represent only a short period of time – for example just one quarter, or three month’s of hospital care.

Reports may also include only certain types of patients. For example, if only Medicare patients are included in a report, the data would not reflect all of the care provided to a hospital’s patients.

Data may also be reported for a small number of patients at one hospital, and compared to hospitals that treat a larger number of patients. This can affect percentage ratings, which can be misleading.

Who is reporting the data?
There are many reputable reporting agencies, including government agencies, healthcare data organizations, and hospital associations. Consumers should check the credentials of any group reporting healthcare quality data.