America's 50 Best Hospitals

Aspirus Wausau Hospital received HealthGrades’ America’s 50 best Hospitals
distinction in 2009, placing us among the top 1 percent of hospitals in the nation
for clinical quality.

We are the only hospital in Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Iowa to receive this distinction, which is achieved by demonstrating sustained clinical excellence. This year, Aspirus Wausau Hospital received the HealthGrades’ Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical Excellence™ for the sixth straight year (2004-2009), demonstrating a level of care and quality unmatched in the region.

The America’s 50 Best Hospitals distinction is based on an annual comprehensive study conducted by HealthGrades, which produces ratings of nearly every hospital in the nation across 26 different diagnoses and procedures.

HealthGrades examines almost 41 million Medicare hospitalization records and provides a risk-adjusted analysis to account for differences in patient populations between hospitals.

America’s 50 Best Hospitals consistently out-perform all other hospitals in terms of risk-adjusted mortality and in-hospital major complications.

In fact, HealthGrades’ 2009 study found that if all Medicare patients admitted to U.S. hospitals between 2005 and 2007 with any of the 26 conditions studied had received treatment in hospitals that performed at the level of Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence, 152,666 lives may have been saved and 11,772 in-hospital major complications may have been avoided – and that’s only Medicare patients.  

Aspirus Wausau Hospital also received HealthGrades Specialty Excellence Awards in 2009 for:

• Critical Care Excellence Award™
• Pulmonary Care Excellence Award™ - 2 years in a row
• Cardiac Care Excellence Award™ – 5 years in a row
• Coronary Intervention Excellence Award™ – 2 years in a row
• Stroke Care Excellence Award™ – 2 years in a row