The Nebraska Medical Center rates as one of the country’s best hospitals, according to an annual survey conducted by the national magazine, U.S. News & World Report.
This is the 14th year that the magazine has issued its list of America’s Best Hospitals, which are rated by factors such as reputation, mortality and nurse-to-bed ratios. The July 28, 2003 issue finds The Nebraska Medical Center ranked 38th for cancer care and treatment placing above some nationally known institutions like Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., and the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.
Fosdick: Report confirms what patients know
“The report tells the country what thousands of our cancer patients already know — The Nebraska Medical Center is among the best in the world when it comes to cancer treatment,” said Glenn Fosdick, president & CEO of The Nebraska Medical Center, formerly known as Nebraska Health System. “It’s a matter of expertise, serious medicine and extraordinary care.”
Breakthroughs: From bench to bedside
“Part of treating the patient involves finding the right course of therapy and sometimes that means going back to the lab and researching treatment options,” said Kenneth Cowan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center. “That is the beauty of The Nebraska Medical Center — our ability to go from bench to bedside with the latest cancer breakthroughs.”
Healing the person
“What our patients tell us they remember about their experience is the warm, caring environment and a medical team that connected with them,” said James Armitage, M.D. oncologist and dean of the UNMC College of Medicine. “We strive to heal the whole person and respect their mind, spirit and body.”
One of those patients is 45-year-old Mary Ann Mack from Harshaw, Wis. She was the 3,000th patient to receive a bone marrow/stem cell transplant at The Nebraska Medical Center. Mack, who is fighting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, said she looks at her date of transplant, July 3, as her new birthday.
UNMC physicians lead the way
“We did research on other transplant centers, but everything pointed to The Nebraska Medical Center,” Mack said. “Other centers were doing 15 to 20 transplants a year for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, while UNMC physicians were doing 70 to 80 a year.”
“The clinical expertise of both our academic and private practice physicians along with the knowledge of our researchers gives our patients the best of both worlds,” Dr. Armitage said.
“We are the only hospital in the country with two physicians on the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Directors,” Fosdick said. “That speaks volumes about the caliber of physicians and the kind of treatment patients find here at The Nebraska Medical Center.”
More on the report
The America’s Best Hospitals report, which included 203 different medical centers, whittled down from 6,003 hospitals across the country, focused on 17 specialties from cancer to urology. The report can be found in the July 28 issue of U.S. News and World Report, which hit newsstands July 21.