The award recognizes hospitals that have achieved excellence in quality of care, operational efficiency, financial performance, and adaptation to the environment.  The 11th edition of Solucient’s 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success study appears in a special supplement to the May 24th edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.

Lakeview Hospital CEO/Administrator Jeff Robertson says, “Being named in the Top 100 is a great honor.  It is the latest in a series of acclaims earned by Lakeview.”  Robertson continued, “Lakeview was recently recognized for the best orthopedic outcomes in Minnesota, and has rated as one of the highest patient satisfaction hospitals in the metro area over the past 6 years.  Clearly, the employees and medical staff at Lakeview Hospital are committed to the quality and service values established by the board of our community hospital.”

“The management teams at the 100 Top Hospitals have led their facilities to the highest performance levels in the nation by adopting new approaches that facilitate optimum care for patients, based on their real needs,” said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president of Solucient’s Center for Healthcare Improvement and the 100 Top Hospitals program.

Among the key findings:

• Patients at winning hospitals return to everyday life faster than those at non-winning hospitals. These patients were released nearly half a day sooner, on average, than patients at peer hospitals.
• Benchmark hospitals had a nearly 18 percent lower mortality rate than peer hospitals, while patients at 100 Top Hospitals had 13 percent fewer complications.
• The nation’s top performing hospitals are more likely to address the needs of the terminally ill through hospice services than other acute care U.S. hospitals. In fact, if all acute care hospitals performed at the same level as the nation’s top hospitals, 95,000 more Medicare patients could survive and an additional 77,000 patient stays could be complication free each year - at an estimated annual savings of $8.8 billion.
• Expenses per discharge at benchmark hospitals were 16 percent lower than peer hospitals ($4,147 benchmark vs. $4,950 peer).
• Winning hospitals pay more to attract quality staff. Salary and benefits per full-time employee were nearly 3 percent higher than peer hospitals.
• Benchmark hospitals treat more - and sicker - patients than non-winning hospitals. The median Medicare patient case mix index at winning hospitals was 22 percent higher than at peer hospitals. Benchmark hospitals also had 24 percent more admissions per bed.
• Winning hospitals use a higher percentage of special care days for their patients - 14 percent vs. 11 percent for peer hospitals.
• The cash flow to total debt ratio at benchmark hospitals was nearly 119% higher than peer hospitals.

The 11th edition of the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks for Success study analyzed acute care hospitals nationwide using detailed empirical performance data from 2002, including publicly available MedPAR data and Medicare cost reports. Facilities recognized on the list are represented across five hospital classes:

• Major Teaching - 15 winners
• Teaching - 25 winners
• Large Community, 250+ Beds - 21 winners (due to tie)
• Medium Community, 100 to 249 Beds - 20 winners
• Small Community, 25 to 99 Beds - 20 winners

Lakeview Hospital is listed as a winner in the small community class.  The study scored facilities according to key measures: risk-adjusted mortality and risk adjusted complications, average length of stay, expenses, profitability, growth in percent of community served, cash flow to total debt ratio, tangible assets per adjusted discharge, and coding specificity.