Fast Facts:
Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®:
Performance Improvement Leaders—2005

WHAT IS IT?

The Solucient 100 Top Hospitals: Performance Improvement Leaders study recognizes U.S. hospitals and their leadership teams that made the greatest progress in improving hospital-wide performance over five years (2000-2004). For details, click here.

WHO CONDUCTED THE STUDY?

The study is presented by Solucient.

WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?

The study was released on May 1, 2006.

WHICH HOSPITALS WON?

For a complete list of winners, click here.

HOW WERE THE WINNERS CHOSEN?

We assigned each hospital in the study group to one of five comparison groups according to bed size, teaching status and residency program involvement. We calculated nine performance measure values for each hospital within each comparison group using Medicare cost reports, MedPAR data, and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) outpatient data from years 2000 through 2004. Within the comparison groups, we ranked hospitals on the basis of their performance on each of the nine measures relative to other hospitals in their group. We then summed each hospital's performance-measure ranking to arrive at a total ranking for the hospital. Seven of the nine performance measures were given equal weight in this ranking; two exceptions are the cashflow to debt ratio and the tangible assets per adjusted discharge measures; which each carry a weight half that of the other measures. The hospitals with the best total ranking in each comparison group were selected for the list.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE KEY FINDINGS?

This year's performance improvement leaders have shown a clear ability to improve across their entire organization—resulting in better clinical outcomes and efficiency, increased financial strength, and growing patient volumes. The study found that PI Leaders made the following gains between 2000 and 2004:

• They have fewer than expected complications, deaths and adverse safety events despite starting five years ago with higher than expected incidence.
• They improved financial stability going from being barely profitable to achieving a healthy positive profit margin of 5.8%.
• They discharge patients two-thirds of a day earlier than five years ago.
• They increased expenses by only 8%, while their peers' expenses increased 20%.
• They grew their patient volume 5.3 percent, while their peers lost 1.5 percent of their patient volume.

• Major Teaching - 15
• Teaching - 25
• Large Community, 250+ Beds - 20
• Medium Community, 100 to 249 Beds - 20
• Small Community, 25 to 99 Beds - 20
  

WHO DO I CONTACT FOR MORE INFORMATION?

All media inquiries should be made to Ginny Sexton at Solucient; gsexton@solucient.com.

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