The first hospital ratings system to address the new challenges required by healthcare reform today named Providence Holy Cross Medical Center to its top 100 list of hospitals in an analysis of  performance measures including quality, outcomes and patient perspectives.

Providence Holy Cross in Mission Hills was the only San Fernando Valley hospital included in the tally and one of just three hospitals in the Los Angeles area.

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“The face of health care is changing rapidly and we are proud to be leaders in meeting the challenges of national healthcare reform by providing top quality care, controlling costs and laying the framework for a state-of-the-art electronic medical records system that will improve care by broadening communication among physicians, staff and patients,” said Larry Bowe, chief executive of Providence Holy Cross.

The new ratings system was announced today by iVantage Health Analytics, a newly formed healthcare business intelligence and technology company. The iVantage Hospital Strength Index is designed to provide hospitals with balanced scorecards and comparable ratings of their performance as they begin implementing mandates of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. According to iVantage, the index offers hospital leaders an objective way to measure their relative performance among their competitors and across 56 different performance metrics.

“The Hospital Strength Index is a big deal because the process of measuring performance is more difficult than ever for administrators,” said John Morrow, executive vice president of iVantage. “We created the Hospital Strength Index to bring clarity and insight to hospital performance in an increasingly complex and competitive environment.”

The index incorporates 56 measures of performance to help identify those hospitals that are best prepared for success under the new healthcare regulations. The measures include market strength, value-based strength and financial strength as key pillars for setting new goals under health reform. Growth and long-term stability also factor in.

With its new South Tower that opened in July, the award-winning Providence Holy Cross is a 377-bed medical center known for excellence in trauma and emergency care, cardiology, neurology, oncology, women’s services and other specialties.

Four medical centers in the five-state Providence Health & Services system were included in the iVantage’s Top 100 – Providence Holy Cross in Mission Hills; Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage; Providence Regional Medical Center Everett in Everett, Wash., and St. Patrick Hospital and Health Sciences in Missoula, Mont.

Seven hospitals in California were named to the list. Three are in the Los Angeles area – Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Huntington Memorial Hospital.