Truven Health Analytics has published its annual list of the 100 Top Hospitals in the United States. For the first time in more than two decades of the study, Truven uncovered a notable trend toward reduced expense per patient among the majority of the top-performing hospitals.
Award winners are chosen by Truven based on clinical and operational performance in 11 areas: inpatient mortality, 30-day mortality rate, complications, core measures, 30-day risk-adjusted readmission rate, severity-adjusted average length of stay, mean emergency room throughput, inpatient expense per discharge, Medicare spend per beneficiary, adjusted operating profit margin and HCAHPS score.
"Many of the 2016 100 Top Hospitals award winners are breaking the mold for high performance. Hospitals in three out of the five hospital categories actually reduced overall expense year over year, while improving patient outcomes," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president at Truven Health Analytics. "Some of these hospitals also show a small degradation of operating profit margin. Hopefully this is not an indicator of a developing trend."
Highlighted below are five takeaways from Truven Health's 100 Top Hospitals study.
1. As a group, Truven's Top Hospitals for 2016 reported 23 percent fewer patient deaths and 21 percent fewer complications than expected given patient severity.
2. The average 30-day mortality and readmission rates were lower at award-winning hospitals than non-winning hospitals, regardless of comparison groups.
3. After adjusting for patient severity, Top Hospitals reported a median length of stay that was half a day shorter than their non-winning peers.
4. Top Hospitals had considerably higher profit margins, reporting a median operating profit margin that was nearly 9 percentage points higher than hospitals that didn't make the cut.
5. If every Medicare inpatient received the same level of care as those treated at Top Hospitals, Truven estimates nearly 48,400 complications could have been avoided, more than 104,000 lives could have been saved and $2 billion in inpatient costs could have been saved.
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