ANN ARBOR, Mich., April 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Truven Health Analytics®, part of the IBM Watson HealthTM business, released its annual study identifying 15 Top U.S. health systems based on balanced, system-wide clinical and administrative performance.

Among the key findings in this year's study: winning health systems achieved shorter emergency department wait times across all measures, which include median minutes to admission, to discharge from the ED, and to receipt of pain medication for long bone fractures. The study relied on public data from the 2014 and 2015 Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR), CMS Hospital Compare datasets, and 2015 Medicare cost reports.

Additional winning health system performance metrics, compared to non-winning peer systems, include:

Shorter Wait Times in Emergency Departments: Patients at the 15 Top Health System winners had 17.5 percent shorter wait times in the emergency department.

Higher Survival Rates: The 15 Top Health System winners had 13.4 percent fewer in-hospital deaths.

Fewer Complications: Patients treated at winning systems had 8.5 percent fewer complications.
Shorter Length of Stay: The average patient length of stay at winning health systems was 10.2 percent shorter.

"The study recognizes these 15 health systems that have proven it is possible to drive down expense while improving the quality of care," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and the 100 Top Hospitals® program at Truven Health Analytics. "More importantly, the leaders of these health systems are demonstrating the power of aligning best practices across multiple hospitals to achieve greater levels of efficiency while delivering higher overall standards of care."

This year's 15 Top Health Systems study evaluated 337 health systems and 2,924 member hospitals to identify the 15 U.S. health systems with the highest overall achievement on a balanced scorecard. The scorecard is based on the 100 Top Hospitals national balanced scorecard methodologies and focuses on five performance domains: inpatient outcomes, process of care, extended outcomes, efficiency, and patient experience.

The study divides the top health systems into three comparison groups based on total operating expense of the member hospitals. The 2017 winners are as follows:

Large Health Systems (operating expense > $1.75 billion)

Mayo Foundation – Rochester, MN
Mercy – Chesterfield, MO
Scripps Health – San Diego, CA

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