Top 100 hospitals named as benchmarks

Baltimore-based HCIA Inc. and Washington-based William H. Mercer Inc.'s Health Care Provider Consulting practice released their 1997 list of top hospitals and industry benchmarks for hospitals.

The study spotlights hospitals that deliver the most cost-efficient and high- quality medical care. Rankings are based on nine measures of clinical quality practices, operations and financial management, including: risk-adjusted mortality index; risk-adjusted complications index; severity-adjusted average length of stay; expense per adjusted discharge, case mix- and wage-adjusted; profitability; index of outpatient activity; index of total facility occupancy; long-term growth in equity; and productivity, or total asset-turnover ratio.

Both not-for-profit and investor-owned were evaluated for the study. Forty investor-owned and 61 not-for-profit hospitals made the top 100 (actually, 101 due to a tie).

Investor-owned hospitals, however, outperformed their not-for-profit counterparts. They accounted for 40% of the benchmarks even though only 11% of the facilities evaluated for the study were investor-owned.

By region, the South produced the greatest number (50) of benchmark hospitals; 35% of those were located in Florida, Tennessee and Texas.

In analyzing the study results, HCIA and Mercer concluded that hospitals could avoid a cumulative $24 billion in annual expenses if they performed as well as the top 100 hospitals. They also predicted that inpatient mortality and complication rates would drop by 22%, profitability would increase by more than 50% and average lengths of stay would decrease by nearly half a day if all hospitals adopted the standards of the benchmark 100.

A summary version of the study, including the top hospitals and their locations, is listed on HCIA's Web site, www.hcia.com, and Mercer's site, www. mercer.com. PR