Solucient 100 Top Hospitals Performance Improvement Leader (2004)

In March 2004, Griffin Hospital was named one of the nation's top performance improvement leader hospitals by Solucient, a leading provider of strategic business and clinical information for the health care industry. Griffin was named in the 100-249 bed medium sized community hospital group. The hospital was recognized for developing consistent and effective organization-wide performance improvement across critical measures at a faster rate than other U.S. hospitals over a five year period. The measures include quality of care, operational efficiency, and financial performance.

The Solucient study scored facilities according to key measures: risk-adjusted mortality and risk adjusted complications, average length of stay, expenses, profitability, percent of outpatient revenue, productivity and coding specificity. When compared to all U.S. hospitals of similar size, Griffin's performance improvement scored in the top one-percent.

The study that produced the Solucient "100 Top Hospitals: Performance Improvement Leaders" included more than 6,000 hospitals and more than 12 million patient discharges.

Management teams at the Performance Improvement Leader hospitals were recognized for setting the standard for performance improvement by saving more lives, discharging patients faster and with fewer complications, and maintaining efficiency with lower costs.

Specifically, the typical Performance Improvement Leaders made the following gains between 1997 and 2001:

• Discharged patients nearly a day earlier
• Decreased their average expenses, while their peers increased theirs
• Increased their profit margin substantially -- from 0.58 to 2.73%
• Lowered their mortality index from 1.21 to 0.91

The Solucient Performance Measures combined a group of eight measures of clinical quality practice, operations, and financial management to score hospitals. The eight measures are:

1. Risk-adjusted mortality index
2. Risk-adjusted complications index
3. Severity-adjusted average length of stay
4. Expense per adjusted discharge, case mix- and wage-adjusted
5. Profitability (operating profit margin)
6. Proportion of outpatient revenue
7. Productivity (total asset turnover ratio)
8. Coding specificity rate