WHAT IS IT?
The Solucient 100 Top Hospitals: Performance Improvement Leaders study recognizes hospitals and their management teams for leading their facilities to achieve the fastest rate of consistent annual organizational improvement among all U.S. hospitals between 1999 and 2003.

WHO CONDUCTED THE STUDY?
The study is presented by Solucient.

WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?
The study was released on April 25, 2005.

WHICH HOSPITALS WON?
From over 2,500 hospitals, 100 were selected from across the nation.  Other hospitals selected from this award include Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, N.Y., Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, Md., and University Medical Center at Princeton in Princeton, N.J.

HOW WERE THE WINNERS CHOSEN?
Solucient assigned each hospital in the study group to one of five comparison groups according to bed size, teaching status and residency program involvement.  Within the comparison groups, they ranked hospitals on the basis of their performance on each of nine major performance measures.  They then summed each hospital's performance-measure ranking to arrive at a total ranking for the hospital.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE KEY FINDINGS?
The 2004 Performance Improvement Leaders have shown a clear ability to improve on a series of management and clinical outcome measures by improving clinical outcomes and efficiency and growing financial strength and the percent of community served.