Sound Physicians Honors St. Alphonsus Medical Center Hospitalist Team with Award for Excellence in Care

Tacoma, Wash. – Aug. 4, 2015 – Sound Physicians, a physician-founded and led organization with more than 2,000 physicians providing care in more than 300 hospitals and post-acute facilities across the U.S., announced today it has today honored St. Alphonsus Medical Center in Nampa, Idaho, with its Symphony Award, given to the hospitalist team with the highest overall internally measured, standardized and benchmarked performance scores out of all Sound Physicians’ hospitalist and intensivist programs nationwide.

St. Alphonsus Medical Center – Nampa, a 152-bed acute care hospital in Nampa, Idaho, partnered with Sound Physicians in 2010 to strengthen the quality of patient care provided to the greater Nampa community. Sound Physicians, which drives improvements in quality, satisfaction, and financial performance throughout the acute episode of care, has designed a number of initiatives to improve patient care at St. Alphonsus Medical Center. These include recruiting a team of full-time physicians and eradicating the use of temporary staffing, thereby ensuring patients are more likely to be seen by the same hospitalist for the course of their stay, and that hospitalists are more likely to have relationships with a patient’s primary care physician.

Similarly, Sound Physicians partnered with the critical care team, making St. Alphonsus Medical Center more capable of caring for patients in the community without transferring to other facilities, where families may have more difficulty visiting. Karl Keeler, President of St. Alphonsus Medical Center, said, “We are incredibly proud of our hospitalist team at St. Alphonsus Medical Center. Sound Physicians has been an invaluable partner in creating a strong hospitalist program that provides quality care to our patients and our community.”

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