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January 1997
Top 100 Hospitals -- 1996
Morrissey J. Modern Healthcare (Weekly Business News) 1996: 26:52-64.
Everyone in healthcare is experiencing change--for better or worse. Those
healthcare systems which will remain in the market are those which not only
look within their own organization/management for specific opportunities for
improvements in resource utilization and cost structure, but also
simultaneously and actively engage in a "benchmarking" process--comparing
one's specific management and results with those considered the "best of
breed" in the industry.
This article refers to a continuing analysis of
Medicare cost and discharge data on 3,575 acute-care hospitals prepared by
the HCIA Company, and the William M Mercer Company. The analysis reviews 8
measures of clinical, operational and financial performance in 5 categories
of hospitals, from which 100 were selected as "best". The standards by
which these hospitals were judged were based on:
- Financial
management--Expense per adjusted discharge; Change in equity; Return on
capital assets;
- Operations--Average length of stay; Index of outpatient
revenues compared with the previous year; and,
- Clinical
Practices--Risk-adjusted Mortality; and Risk-adjusted Complication.
In
addition to reading this summary of the HCIA/Mercer Report, an extensive
abstract is available via the Internet and entitled "100 Top Hospitals:
Benchmarks for Success"
(Go there: http://www.hcia.com/newsletters/100top/intro.shtml)
Even a brief review of this information will prove to be useful to all
practitioners today, who, even if only in self defense, need to be aware of
the kinds of changes occurring in those medical centers considered
"successful" in today's medicoeconomic environment.
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