Consumer Directed Healthcare

Hospitals are continuously trying to reinvent them selves. Hospitals in the Midwest are doing just that. The Solucient list of 100 Top hospitals (www.100tophospitals.com) was release in March. This annual study identifies the nation’s top organization-wide performers, using the two most recent years of data. The 100 top hospitals have higher survival rates and keep more patients complicated-free and attract more patients-all the while maintaining higher profits. It is estimated that if all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as those in the 100 Top Hospitals:

• More than 100,000 additional patients would survive each year
• More than 114,000 complications would be avoided annually
• Expenses would decline by an aggregate 10.9 billion a year
• The average patient stay would decrease by more than half a day

More than 50 % of the winning hospitals in the 2006 study are from the Midwest, and 30 of the 100 top Hospitals are in two states- Michigan and Ohio. Nearly two-thirds of states in the south (10 of 17) ranked in lowest quintiles. Three of the most populous states-California, New York, and Texas-placed in the two lowest quintiles.

This study is a great read and gives insight to how winning providers treat staff. The better hospitals paid their staffs more, salary and benefits, than other hospitals in the study.