Using our unique trending methodologies, this study identifies hospital management teams that have led their organizations to achieve the fastest rate of consistent annual organizational improvement over five years.

View the complete list of Performance Improvement Leaders.

Findings
The study revealed that in recent years the vast majority of hospitals have shown little ability to improve performance. The good news is that such improvement is possible: 100 hospitals from all across the nation — the 2006 Thomson Performance Improvement Leaders — have shown a clear ability to improve, raising clinical outcomes and efficiency, and growing financial strength and the percent of community served.

The winners of the 2006 Performance Improvement Leaders Award made the following gains between 2001 and 2005:

• Went from having more patient deaths, complications, and adverse safety events than expected to having fewer than expected
• Increased their expenses by only 6 percent, a rate significantly below cost of living increases. Peer hospitals' expenses, meanwhile, increased 18 percent.
• Grew their outpatient services more quickly and consistently than their peers. Rose from being unprofitable to maintaining a healthy positive profit margin of 5.9 percent
• Discharged patients almost a day earlier, despite increasing patient acuity

Methods
This study is based on the National Benchmarks for Success study and uses a multi-year trending tool. In developing this tool, we devised a methodology that we feel removes the bias that could diminish our ability to highlight true data trends.

The main steps we take in selecting the Performance Improvement Leaders are:

• Building the database of hospitals, including special selection and exclusion criteria:
  This study focuses on short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of patients. The data come from public sources—the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) data set, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Standard Analytical File (SAF) outpatient data set, and the Medicare Cost Report. The data in this study are from federal fiscal years 2001 through 2005.
  
  
• Classifying hospitals into five study groups according to bed size and teaching status:
  • Major Teaching Hospitals
  • Teaching Hospitals
  • Large Community Hospitals
  • Medium Community Hospitals
  • Small Community Hospitals
  
  
  
• Scoring hospitals on a set of weighted performance measures that are centered on clinical excellence, operating efficiency and financial health, and responsiveness to the community:
  1. Risk-adjusted mortality index
  2. Risk-adjusted complications index
  3. Risk-adjusted patient safety index
  4. Severity-adjusted average length of stay
  5. Expense per adjusted discharge, case mix- and wage-adjusted
  6. Profitability (operating profit margin)
  7. Cash to total debt ratio
  8. Growth in patient volume
  
  
  
• Determining the hospitals that have improved the most, organization-wide, over five years, by ranking hospitals relative to their comparison group

Make the 100 Top Hospitals® study work for you:

Want to see how your hospital scored on the 100 Top Hospitals measures? Order a Results Report to see how you compare.

To understand how your hospital’s 5-year performance improvement compares with your peers, order a Performance Improvement Leaders Report.

For more information, email the 100 Top Hospitals Coordinator at th.pubs@thomson.com or call Thomson Healthcare Publications at (800) 568-3282 (option #3).