A data visualizer shows the 10 most similar hospitals to any one benchmark hospital, challenging traditional, ordinal rank lists in a time of great volatility for hospitals.
SimilarityIndex | Hospitals comes from Trilliant Health, which created the tool so health economy stakeholders can learn how similar a selected benchmark hospital is to — or different from — highly regarded U.S. hospitals.
"Historical approaches to benchmarking have been ineffective in improving the performance of the U.S. health economy, particularly the hospitals that are the lifeblood of the industry," Hal Andrews, Trilliant Health president and CEO, said. "The industry has chased vanity rankings like U.S. News & World Report's 'Hospital Honor Roll' for decades, even though the names on those lists rarely change. In 2023, every health system faces significant challenges, and many are in grave financial distress. This is no time for 'aspirational' benchmarking."
The index initially generates comparable peer groups and then compares the performance of the peer group nationally across quality, financial, competitive and price indexes. Similarity Scores are bound between 0 and 100, with a value closer to 100 reflecting greater similarity to the benchmark hospital.
Becker's took the 10 top-ranked hospitals from the latest U.S. News and World Report's Honor Roll to find their five most similar aggregate peers. Their similarity scores are listed.
"What this data-driven analysis reveals is that the hospitals deemed most prestigious in the U.S. are rarely similar to each other, and their closest peers are often not the hospitals that you would expect," Mr. Andrews said. "In fact, the most prestigious hospitals are so different that they are not relevant benchmarks for each other, much less the typical community hospital in America, which underscores why hospital executives should stop trying to emulate what the 'top hospitals,' as determined by lists that use surveys or other subjective information, are doing."
1. Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.)
1. University of Kentucky Hospital (Lexington, Ky.): 71.68
2. Barnes Jewish Hospital (St. Louis): 67.19
3. Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital (Milwaukee): 66.95
4. Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, Tenn.): 66.62
5. Ochsner Clinic Foundation (New Orleans): 65.76
2. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles)
1. Santa Monica (Calif.) – UCLA Medical Center: 68.92
2. Huntington Hospital (Pasadena, Calif.): 63.76
3. Pomona (Calif.) Valley Hospital Medical Center: 63.28
4. White Memorial Medical Center (Los Angeles): 62.75
5. Providence St. Joseph Hospital Orange (Calif.): 62.70
3. NYU Langone Hospitals (New York City)
1. Montefiore Medical Center (New York City): 86.02
2. Mount Sinai Hospital (New York City): 76.11
3. Long Island Jewish Medical Center (Queens, N.Y.): 62.86
4. North Shore University Hospital (Manhasset, N.Y.): 61.96
5. SUNY/Stony Brook (N.Y.) University Hospital: 61.67
4. Cleveland Clinic
1. Barnes-Jewish Hospital (St. Louis): 76.99
2. University of Alabama Hospital (Birmingham): 73.11
3. University of Maryland Medical Center (Baltimore): 70.76
4. Indiana University Health (Indianapolis): 68.78
5. UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside (Pittsburgh): 67.87
5. Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore) (tie)
1. Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (Philadelphia): 74.95
2. UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside (Pittsburgh): 74.35
3. Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, Tenn.): 74.19
4. UMass Memorial Medical Center (Worcester, Mass.): 73.73
5. Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Hospital: 73.44
5. UCLA Medical Center (Los Angeles) (tie)
1. LAC/Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (Torrance, Calif.): 54.32
2. University of California Irvine Medical Center (Orange, Calif.): 44.93
3. LAC + USC Medical Center (Los Angeles): 44.24
4. Rush University Medical Center (Chicago): 34.49
5. University of Illinois Hospital (Chicago): 34.01
6. New York-Presbyterian Hospital
1. NYU Langone Hospitals (New York City): 61.21
2. Montefiore Medical Center (New York City): 56.79
3. Long Island Jewish Medical Center (New Hyde Park, N.Y.): 41.32
4. Mount Sinai Hospital (New York City): 40.59
5. Westchester Medical Center (Valhalla, N.Y.): 26.71
7. Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston)
1. Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston): 88.55
2. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston): 76.78
3. University of Colorado Hospital (Aurora): 73.78
4. M Health Fairview University of Minnesota (Minneapolis): 73.71
5. Temple University Hospital (Philadelphia): 73.19
8. Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Chicago)
1. Loyola University Medical Center (Maywood, Ill.): 80.77
2. University of Chicago Medical Center: 79.67
3. Rush University Medical Center (Chicago): 74.88
4. Advocate Christ Hospital and Medical Center (Oak Lawn, Ill.): 71.91
5. Advocate Lutheran General Hospital (Park Ridge, Ill.): 69.83
9. Stanford (Calif.) Health Care – Stanford Hospital
1. UCSF Medical Center (San Francisco): 52.59
2. Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital: 45.86
3. University of Virginia Medical Center (Charlottesville): 37.74
4. University of California Davis Medical Center (Sacramento): 35.94
5. Harborview Medical Center (Seattle): 32.52
10. Barnes-Jewish Hospital (St. Louis)
1. Indiana University Health (Indianapolis): 80.92
2. Cleveland Clinic: 76.99
3. University of Alabama Hospital (Birmingham): 75.92
4. Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, Tenn.): 75.61
5. UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside (Pittsburgh): 71.79