Methodology for Premier’s 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals 2025
Each year, Premier conducts objective, quantitative research to shine a light on the nation’s highest-performing hospitals, health systems, and cardiovascular service lines, through Premier’s 100 Top Hospitals program. The goal of the program is to deliver unbiased, guiding insights that can help all healthcare organizations focus their improvement initiatives and move toward consistent, sustainable top performance. Organizations do not apply to participate in the study, and award winners do not pay to market their honor.
Premier’s 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals study is based on quantitative research that uses a balanced scorecard approach, based on publicly available data, to identify the top cardiovascular hospitals in the U.S. This study focuses on short-term, acute care, nonfederal U.S. hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of cardiology patients. It includes patients requiring medical management, as well as those who receive invasive or surgical procedures. Because multiple measures are used, a hospital must provide all forms of cardiovascular care, including open heart surgery, to be included in the study. Each patient group is mutually exclusive, by design.
•AMI patients – restricted to nonsurgical patients
•HF patients – restricted to nonsurgical patients
•CABG patients – includes all ICD- 10-CM procedure codes, principal or secondary in MS-DRGs 231 – 236
•PCI patients – excludes patients with open chest coronary artery angioplasty
Class definition
Each hospital is defined within a class based on their bed size and teaching status:
Teaching with Cardiovascular Residency Programs – 302 Hospitals (20 benchmark)
– Meets definition for class 2, AND
– Involved in one or more cardio residency program(s) (Cardiology, Cardiothoracic Surgery, Cardiovascular Disease, Cardiovascular Medicine, Interventional Cardiology, Thoracic Surgery, Thoracic Surgery-Integrated, Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology, Adult Congenital Heart Disease)
Teaching Hospital without Cardiovascular Residency Program – 336 Hospitals (20 benchmark)
1. Two ways to meet:
Meets at least two of the following criteria:
– Bed Size >= 200
– Resident-to-Bed Ratio >= 0.03 (c_irpbed) (current year OR previous year)
– Total GME Programs >= 3
OR
2. Resident-to-Bed ratio >0.25, regardless of beds or GME programs
Community – 287 Hospitals (10 benchmark)
Must meet the following criteria:
– Not classified as a teaching hospital per definitions above
Total # of in-study – 925 Hospitals (50 benchmark)
Final rank
Final Rank is determined based on performance for all individual measures. Hospitals are ranked within their class definition group. The top 20 final ranked in peer groups CV teaching and teaching and top 10 in community are the benchmark (winner) hospitals.
Hospital measure domains
- Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI)
- Heart Failure (HF)
- Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG)
- Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI)
Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) performance
There are six AMI measures used in the scorecard. Measures include risk-adjusted inpatient mortality, 30-day mortality, 30-day readmissions, severity-adjusted length of stay, wage- and severity-adjusted average cost per case, and 30-day episode payment.
Heart Failure (HF)
There are six HF measures used in the scorecard. Measures include risk-adjusted inpatient mortality, 30-day mortality, 30-day readmissions, severity-adjusted length of stay, wage- and severity-adjusted average cost per case, and 30-day episode payment.
Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG)
There are six CABG measures used in the scorecard. Measures include risk-adjusted inpatient mortality, risk-adjusted complications, 30-day mortality, 30-day readmissions, severity-adjusted length of stay, and wage- and severity-adjusted average cost per case.
Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI)
There are four PCI measures used in the scorecard. Measures include risk-adjusted inpatient mortality, risk-adjusted complications, severity-adjusted length of stay, and wage- and severity-adjusted average cost per case.