(WILMINGTON, Del. – June 29, 2023)

ChristianaCare has been recognized as a 2023 Outpatient Joint Replacement Excellence Award™ recipient by Healthgrades, a health care quality ratings and services company.

This achievement reflects ChristianaCare’s outstanding clinical outcomes for outpatient knee and hip replacement and places ChristianaCare in the top 10% nationwide for outpatient joint replacement. ChristianaCare’s Christiana and Wilmington hospitals are the only hospitals in Delaware to earn the award.

“At ChristianaCare, our talented caregivers partner with many of Delaware’s most experienced and highly skilled orthopaedic surgeons to help people with joint injuries get back on their feet,” said Gerard J. Fulda, M.D., chair of ChristianaCare’s Department of Surgery. “Patients who visit our outpatient orthopaedic practices have access to compassionate, experienced care and clinical excellence. We are honored that Healthgrades has recognized our success with this prestigious award.”

Healthgrades analyzed patient outcomes at short-term acute care hospitals throughout the country that offer joint replacement in the outpatient environment. This analysis included years 2019 through 2021 to identify the top-performing hospitals for outpatient knee and hip replacement. Healthgrades’s analysis revealed significant variation in patient outcomes between hospitals that achieved a 2023 Outpatient Joint Replacement Excellence Award and those that did not during the three-year study period.

Patients treated at hospitals that received a 2023 Outpatient Joint Replacement Excellence Award have, on average, a 50.7% lower risk of experiencing a complication than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.* In fact, patients who have an outpatient joint replacement procedure at hospitals that did not receive the award are more than twice as likely to experience one or more complications than patients treated at an award recipient hospital.*

“Through the industry’s first outcomes-based outpatient award, Healthgrades is excited to recognize ChristianaCare for their ongoing commitment to providing high-quality care to patients undergoing outpatient joint replacement,” said Brad Bowman, M.D., chief medical officer and head of Data Science at Healthgrades. “Patients can feel confident that recipients of the 2023 Outpatient Joint Replacement Excellence Award have demonstrated their ability to deliver consistently exceptional outcomes.”

As outpatient surgical volumes continue to grow, Healthgrades is working to expand its outpatient ratings methodology to include key outpatient procedures and conditions to help patients find the best care possible. Consumers can visit Healthgrades.com to learn more about how Healthgrades measures hospital quality. For more information on how Healthgrades identifies the nation’s top hospitals for outpatient orthopaedic surgery, see the 2023 Outpatient Specialty Excellence Awards and Ratings Methodology.

*Statistics are based on Healthgrades analysis of SAF data for years 2019 through 2021 and represent three-year estimates for Medicare patients only.

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About ChristianaCare

Headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, ChristianaCare is one of the country’s most dynamic health care organizations, centered on improving health outcomes, making high-quality care more accessible and lowering health care costs. ChristianaCare includes an extensive network of primary care and outpatient services, home health care, urgent care centers, three hospitals (1,430 beds), a freestanding emergency department, a Level I trauma center and a Level III neonatal intensive care unit, a comprehensive stroke center and regional centers of excellence in heart and vascular care, cancer care and women’s health. It also includes the pioneering Gene Editing Institute.

ChristianaCare is nationally recognized as a great place to work, rated by Forbes as the 2nd best health system for diversity and inclusion, and the 29th best health system to work for in the United States, and by IDG Computerworld as one of the nation’s Best Places to Work in IT. ChristianaCare is rated by Healthgrades as one of America’s 50 Best Hospitals and continually ranked among the nation’s best by U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek and other national quality ratings. ChristianaCare is a nonprofit teaching health system with more than 260 residents and fellows. With its groundbreaking Center for Virtual Health and a focus on population health and value-based care, ChristianaCare is shaping the future of health care.

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