Baylor has received some of the highest honors bestowed by the country’s leading health care quality organizations including the Leapfrog Patient-Centered Care Award and the National Quality Forum National Quality Healthcare Award. 

And for the past three years, the Baylor Heart and Vascular Hospital in Dallas has been recognized for achieving the lowest readmission rate in the country for heart failure patients according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

In 2011, Baylor – already the second largest provider of cancer services in Texas – opened the new Baylor Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center at Dallas. The $350 million, 467,000 square-foot project includes the largest outpatient cancer center and only dedicated cancer hospital in North Texas. 

In the spring of 2012, the new 95-bed Baylor Medical Center at McKinney opened its doors in one of the region’s fastest-growing communities.  And currently, more than $250-million dollars of additional growth projects are planned throughout the system.

In 2010, the Baylor Diabetes Health and Wellness Institute opened in one of the most underserved areas of Dallas.  The unique, $15-million project was brought to life through a public/private partnership between Baylor and the City of Dallas in a ZIP code where residents are three-times more likely to die from diabetes compared to those living in Dallas as a whole.

The institute’s mission is to save lives through improved diabetes care, education and research and its innovative medical-home model is changing the role hospitals play in communities.

In 2010, Baylor responded to the climate’s uncertainty with Vision 2015, a roadmap through the future of health care.  The vision includes plans to create an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) and improve patient care through information technology and new patient-centered models by 2015. 

And today, more than two dozen Baylor leaders serve in national leadership positions with organizations including the American Journal of Cardiology, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and the American Gastroenterology Association.

In fiscal year 2011, Baylor provided more than $539 million in charity and unreimbursed care (as reported to the Texas Department of State Health Services). 

It also maintains one of only two Level 1 Trauma Centers in Dallas, one of the largest emergency departments in the nation.  Designed to accommodate more than 100,000 critically injured patients annually, the 78,000-square-foot facility provides care for 40 percent of the serious trauma cases in the area. 

And Baylor provides primary care to the uninsured through several different models including nine faith-based clinics.  One, in downtown Dallas, proved in a 2010 study to reduce emergency department visits by 34 percent and inpatient hospital admissions by nearly 50 percent.