Hospital Value Index™ Report: Hospitals in Montana, Massachusetts and Iowa Offer Greatest Value Healthcare in U.S.

State by State Study Finds Maine, West Virginia and Alabama Among Top 10 States for High Value Hospital Care

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The highest value hospital care available in the United States is offered by hospitals in states as disparate as Montana, New York and Alabama, underscoring that the variation in hospital value is as wide as studies of quality and utilization, according to a Hospital Value Index™ report released today.

“These findings underscore that the variances in care and performance are extreme and don’t correlate well to spending or utilization. Our emphasis on states and CMS Regions demonstrates the challenges ahead for hospitals, as well as the federal government, as it seeks to implement Value-Based Purchasing”

The Hospital Value Index™ studies the quality of care, affordability and efficiency, and patient satisfaction of more than 3,000 acute care hospitals throughout the United States.

The study’s results showed that:

• Hospitals in Montana, Massachusetts and Iowa provide the greatest value, and hospitals in California, New Mexico and Nevada provided the least value care to patients.*
• On a 100- point scale, the average Hospital Value Index™ scores for each state ranged from 61.8 in Montana to 40.5 in Nevada.*
• Texas, a state with more than 250 hospitals analyzed in the study, showed an average Hospital Value Index™ score of 45.2, ranking the state in the bottom ten.*

*For a complete list of state-by-state findings, please visit www.hospitalvalueindex.com/statecompare.aspx.

“As policymakers currently seek a solution for the U.S. healthcare delivery system, we need to focus specifically on why the delivery of high value care is so widely divergent among states and even among markets," said Hal Andrews, CEO of Data Advantage, the company that developed the Hospital Value Index™. "Based on our findings, states like Texas, California and Nevada have a great deal to learn from hospitals in Montana, Massachusetts and Iowa.”

Since the initial release of the Hospital Value Index™ in June 2008, members of the Senate Finance Committee and other policymakers have increasingly endorsed Value-Based Purchasing as a key initiative in addressing the nation’s healthcare crisis. Under Value-Based Purchasing, hospital reimbursement would increasingly be based on benchmarks of quality, efficiency, safety and satisfaction of the care hospitals provide to their patients.

“These findings underscore that the variances in care and performance are extreme and don’t correlate well to spending or utilization. Our emphasis on states and CMS Regions demonstrates the challenges ahead for hospitals, as well as the federal government, as it seeks to implement Value-Based Purchasing,” said John Morrow, a founder of 100 Top Hospitals: Benchmarks for Success, and a senior advisor to Data Advantage.

“The good news here is that we have a significant number of hospitals delivering efficient, high quality care with good patient satisfaction. These are the benchmarks that all hospitals need to work towards quickly.”

The Hospital Value Index™ analyzed financial data on Medicare spending submitted by more than 3,000 Medicare-certified general acute-care hospitals to CMS. Each hospital is scored nationally on a 100-point scale. The three elements of Quality, Affordability & Efficiency, and Patient Satisfaction are combined to create an aggregate National Value Score for each hospital.

Benchmarks are available for hospitals at www.HospitalValueIndex.com; the 2009 Best in Value™ rankings will be announced this summer.

About Data Advantage, LLC

Data Advantage, LLC is a privately held healthcare information company that specializes in providing the healthcare and business communities with independent and objective information resources for Business Intelligence for Healthcare™. For more information, visit www.data-advantage.com or call 866-996-3282.