100 top hospitals: performance improvement leaders.(Health Care Industry)

Solucient, March 15, 2004

Editor's note: Solucient, a health care information provider based in Chicago, Ill., has been ranking the 100 Top Hospitals since 1993. This year, for the first time, they recognize hospital CEOs and senior management teams that have "led their organizations to achieve the fastest rate of consistent annual organizational improvement, developed an effective organization-wide culture of performance improvement, and generated directionally correct, consistent organizational improvement over five years at a significantly faster rate than their peers."

"The hospitals named as Performance Improvement Leaders are not necessarily the highest performing hospitals in the nation. Rather, they have the fastest rate of improvement. Although Solucient's 100 Top Performance Improvement Leaders may not have achieved performance at the national benchmark level yet, they show very real capability to do so.

The years we studied--1997 through 2001--were financially challenging for US hospitals. Between 1997 and 2001, only 4% of the hospitals in our study were able to make statistically significant improvements in profitability. An even smaller number (2%) were able to reduce expenses significantly. Moreover, significant productivity improvements were experienced by only 17% of the hospitals. Even so, 75% had no significant change in expenses and 85% showed no marked change in profitability. …