For most businesses, excellence is important. For hospitals, where daily operations are a matter of life and death, it’s essential.
For more than 30 years, that’s been the guiding notion behind the 100 Top Hospitals program, which works to recognize the highest-quality performers and drive continual improvement in the industry through its annual data-driven ranking of the nation’s 100 best hospitals. This year’s Fortune/PINC AI Top Hospital List is based on an analysis of publicly available Medicare data that reflect measures of clinical outcomes, operational efficiency, patient experience, and financial health. Researchers from PINC AI—the technology platform for the health care company Premier—crunched the numbers for 2,601 acute-care, nonfederal U.S. hospitals that were grouped according to five categories: small, medium, and large community hospitals; and teaching and major teaching hospitals. Their analysis also considers a survey-based measure intended to capture a hospital’s contribution to health and health equity in its community.
The winning organizations that rose to the top outperformed their peer hospitals on all 10 key performance indicators, and PINC AI’s researchers found, in extrapolating the data to all Medicare inpatients, that if all hospitals performed at the level of the nation’s top 100, more than 350,000 additional patient lives would be saved, more than 607,000 individuals would be spared in-hospital complications, and more than 16,600 patients would be spared readmission within 30 days of their hospital stay. That amounts to more than $17.6 billion in savings, as well, the researchers noted. Half of this year’s winning hospitals were honored last year as well.
This year, the Top Hospital programs also recognized 26 organizations with the Everest Award, a designation for top hospitals that show industry-leading long-term improvement. Meanwhile, six organizations earned the new Community Champion Award, a distinction given to top hospitals that serve a higher proportion of disadvantaged patients compared to hospitals nationwide.
As has been the case since the beginning of the Top Hospitals program, organizations do not apply for the award, and do not pay to market the honor.
Below, find where the top hospitals in each category are located, then click through to each of the sublists (teaching and community), which also highlight this year’s Everest Award and Community Champion Award winners. (See our methodology here).
Fortune/PINC AI 100 Top Hospitals
PREMIER, PINC AI, 100 TOP HOSPITALS, 15 TOP HEALTH SYSTEMS, and 50 TOP CARDIOVASCULAR HOSPITALS are registered/unregistered trademarks of Premier Healthcare Alliance, L.P. in the United States.
