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High and Low Bond Ratings
June 2015
Healthcare organizations with strong bond ratings are regarded favorably from a financial perspective, of course. In addition, research by the Truven Health Analytics™ ActionOI® program shows that such organizations tend to excel in other categories, such as average length of stay and results of Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) surveys.
The annual Truven Health 100 Top Hospitals® identifies U.S. hospitals with the best overall performance across multiple organizational metrics, including clinical, operational, and financial. The ability of some hospitals to adapt as the industry is changing demonstrates leadership as the winners set the standards their peers seek to achieve. Study projections indicate that if the new national benchmarks of high performance were achieved by all hospitals in the United States, nearly 126,500 additional lives could be saved, almost 109,000 additional patients could be complication-free, and $1.8 billion in inpatient costs could be saved.
Some factors commonly used to explain poor operating performance do not prevent many hospitals from being highly profitable. For example, Truven Health Analytics™ has found that rates of uncompensated care, drug expense, and other factors do not seem to differ between unprofitable and very profitable hospitals. But factors such as Medicaid utilization rates and poor reimbursement rates do appear to impact the least profitable hospitals. One controllable factor that appears to be significant is labor productivity, with the most profitable hospitals posting the lowest labor expense per patient.
In response to concerns raised by healthcare leaders that the absence of adjustment for socioeconomic status (SES) and race characteristics in patient populations impedes the fair comparison of hospitals on risk-standardized 30-day unplanned readmission rates, Truven Health Analytics™ evaluated the extent to which risk-adjusted readmission rates for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia are affected by adjustments for community-level SES factors through its Community Need Index (CNI) and patient race. The study shows there is, indeed, a statistically significant effect. For more, visit truvenhealth.com/wp/readmissionpenalties.
