Quality connection

Health systems are increasing community value. Most studies examining the value produced by the formation of health systems have shown increased prices but did not explore improvement in quality. Our analysis shows that hospital members of health systems are starting to pull ahead of independent hospitals in delivering higher quality.

For this year's Modern Healthcare supplement, we examined correlations among health-system membership, high performance on the 100 Top Hospitals National Balanced Scorecard and pharmaceutical intensity. Previous analyses of health systems have not always demonstrated a significant benefit in terms of quality or cost. In fact, formation of systems has often been associated with higher costs and little or no change in quality.

Our results show that hospitals that are members of a health system are significantly more likely to achieve

100 Top Hospitals status and have lower pharmaceutical intensity. The analysis of individual metrics of the

100 Top Hospitals Balanced Scorecard reveals that lower pharmaceutical intensity is correlated with better inpatient clinical outcomes, shorter stays and lower expense. These results, downloadable at 100tophospitals.com, suggest that hospitals belonging to health systems in 2009 were more likely to “do the right thing at the right time,” and may have been adhering to protocols to raise quality and lower costs more consistently than stand-alone hospitals.

As healthcare reform drives greater industry consolidation, there has been concern whether value will really increase. Thomson Reuters is committed to identifying new intelligence. To establish whether we are seeing a new trend or a blip on the radar, the 10 Top Health Systems study will be published in January rather than June of 2012 and will include five-year rates of improvement for each health system. Stay tuned.