title: Physicians lead the way at America's top hospitals.
abstract: The 100 Top hospitals are selected annually based on seven critical parameters for each of the 6,200-plus U.S. hospitals with 25 or more beds. They include the previous year's risk-adjusted patient mortality and complication rates, severity-adjusted average patient lengths of stay, expenses, profitability, proportional outpatient revenue, and asset turnover ratio (a measure of facility and technological pace-keeping ability). The winners are selected from five comparable size groupings--small, medium, large community, teaching, and large academic hospitals. Conspicuous among the winners at every level are physician-led organizations. Even in the majority of hospitals headed by non-physician administrators, however, the managerial capabilities of medical directors are the key to success. The most common characteristic of these award-winning hospitals is that the leadership is working together and communicating the institution's goals effectively to all levels of the organization.
authors.affiliation: doweber@mcn.org
authors.forename: D O
authors.initials: DO
authors.lastname: Weber
mesh_terms: D000046:Academic Medical Centers / Q000145:classification / Q000592:standards; D019985:Benchmarking; D006739:Hospital Administration / Q000145:classification / Q000592:standards*; D006764:Hospitals, Community / Q000145:classification / Q000592:standards; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching / Q000145:classification / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D008486:Physician Executives; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D014481:United States