Health care in Western New York has been under pressure to improve for many years, but there are bright spots. Most recent is a report that places the Catholic Health System and Kaleida Health in the top 100 of the nation’s most highly integrated health care networks.

Integration means efficiency. An integrated health care network is a combination of facilities, such as hospitals and nursing homes, that coordinate their staff and services to improve care. It’s good news that Western New York placed two systems on the list.

The annual ranking by SDI Health, a Pennsylvania health care consulting firm, evaluates hospital systems based on their performance and degree of integration, including physicians, services and technology.

The Catholic Health System ranked 51st on the 2010 list, and Kaleida Health came in at 79th. This is the third year the Catholic Health System has made the list, moving up from 64th last year and 96th the previous year. Kaleida ranked 76th on last year’s list.

These rankings are good news for Western New Yorkers, and it’s not the only good news regarding health care. The development of Kaleida’s pending $291 million vascular center and its new association with Erie County Medical Center and the University at Buffalo also portend important new developments in what will be an ever-more significant contributor to the region’s health care and, significantly, its economy.

What is more, these changes, and other associated ones, mark important improvements to the long-standing twin problems of having too many hospitals for the region’s shrinking population and a quality of care that was only average. Now, matters seem to be getting better.

Residents of Western New York have reason to be hopeful about the direction of hospital care in the region. The appearance of Catholic Health and Kaleida on the list of the nation’s most highly integrated health networks provides more evidence, and the trend in improvement for the Catholic Health System is especially welcome.