PINC AI™ and Fortune Name the Nation’s 100 Top Hospitals®

Charlotte, NC (September 21, 2023) ─ PINC AI^™, the technology and services brand of Premier, Inc. (NASDAQ: PINC), today announced the nation’s 100 top hospitals. The full list of recognized hospitals was published in an exclusive online article by Fortune.

Based on the data analyzed, it is estimated that if all hospitals performed at the same level of this year’s winners, more than 227,000 additional lives could have been saved, more than 432,000 additional patients could have been complication-free and more than $15.7 billion in inpatient costs could have been saved for the 2022 study year.

The Performance of Facilities on the 100 Top Hospitals^® Program List

To create the list, an objective, quantitative analysis of publicly available data was conducted to identify the top hospitals in the United States. The primary purpose of the PINC AI^™ 100 Top Hospitals^® program is to inspire hospital and health system leaders to pursue higher performance and deliver added value to patients and communities. The program leverages transparent, non-biased data to help inform strategies for sustained performance. Organizations do not apply to participate in the study, and award winners do not pay to market their honor.

This year, based on comparisons between the study winners and a peer group of similar hospitals that were not winners, the analysis found that the winners of the 100 Top Hospitals^® program delivered better outcomes while operating more efficiently and at a lower cost. Compared to non-winning hospitals, this year’s winners had:

• 31percent fewer deaths than non-winning hospitals.
• 9 percent fewer patients with complications.
• 39 percent fewer healthcare associated infections (HAIs).
• Nearly 20 percent lower inpatient expenses per discharge.
• 0.5-day shorter average length of stay.
• Better reported patient experience scores, with a top-box Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) score of 77 percent versus 70 percent for non-winning hospitals.

“As hospitals continue to share the nation’s focus on changing healthcare for the better, hospitals and health systems are recognizing the importance of identifying areas within their walls for quality improvement,” said Leigh Anderson, Premier’s Chief Operating Officer and leader of PINC AI^™. “The transparent and nonbiased measures this study provides help leaders make informed decisions for change. In addition, the PINC AI^™ 100 Top Hospitals^® program helps to set a performance standard for hospitals across the country, creating an aspirational goal as they work to improve outcomes, advance equity and impact communities.”

Everest Award winners

In addition to the top hospital winners, 29 facilities received the Everest Award for setting national benchmarks for both fastest rate of improvement and highest current year performance on the 100 Top Hospitals^® balanced scorecard. This award recognizes the boards, executives and medical staff leaders who developed and executed the strategies that helped drive the highest rates of improvement, resulting in the highest performance in the U.S. at the end of five years.

“We’re very proud of the hospitals that achieved the Everest Award designation,” said Anderson. “It’s truly a testament to their leaderships’ commitment to raising the bar in quality, patient and clinician experiences and financial and operational efficiency.”

Rankings Methodology

The PINC AI^™ 100 Top Hospitals^® program focuses on short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of patients. Premier conducted the PINC AI^™ 100 Top Hospitals^® program study in August 2023. Researchers evaluated 2,644 short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals and health systems. All research was based on the following public data sets: Medicare cost reports, Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MEDPAR) data, and data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Care Compare website. For complete methodology details, please review the Methodology section on page 36 of the complete study here.

Eligible hospitals are ranked for performance across 10 measurement grouping areas.

Final rank is determined based on performance for all individual measures. Hospitals are ranked within five separate peer groups: major teaching hospitals (15 winning facilities), teaching hospitals (25 winning facilities), large community hospitals (20 winning facilities), medium community hospitals (20 winning facilities), and small community hospitals (20 winning facilities).

Methodology for Selecting Everest Award Winners

The methodology for Everest Award winner selections can be summarized in three main steps:

• Selecting the annual 100 Top Hospitals® award winners using our objective methodology based on publicly available data and a balanced scorecard of performance measures using the most current data available (2021 at the time of this study).
• Using our five-year (2017 -2021) trending methodology to select the 100 hospitals that have shown the fastest, most consistent improvement rates on the same balanced scorecard of performance measures.
• Identifying those hospitals that ranked in the top 100 on both lists.

Combining these methodologies yields a select group of Everest Award winners. The number of winners will vary every year, based solely on performance.