iVantage Health Analytics has released its annual ranking of the best healthcare cities in the US, as determined by the Hospital Strength Index.
Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Portland, OR, Virginia Beach and Washington DC (CBSAs) rose to the top in this year’s analysis of hospital and market performance for their populations.
Two of the top cities named last year, St. Louis and New York, were replaced with Grand Rapids and Virginia Beach.
According to iVantage, these top performing healthcare markets serve approximately 13 percent of the US population, or 42 million people.
iVantage identified and profiled all US hospitals with consideration for the wellness, cost and population management effects in their markets.
Using statistical clustering techniques to stratify the large aggregate of Index measures, the research revealed that, among the 4,334 hospitals studied, the benchmarks centered around five tiers of statistically significant performance. The top tier is comprised of 572 HEALTHSTRONG hospitals; these hospitals are present in 283 markets around the country, yet are concentrated around America’s ten best healthcare cities.
At the other end of the spectrum, the study revealed that 405 facilities fall into the fifth and lowest tier, and comprise the Vulnerability Index. Based on their performance indicators, these hospitals are at greater risk for closure and represent in total 319,589 healthcare jobs at risk, 441,003 community jobs at risk, and a $52.5 billion direct GDP impact from that potential job loss.
“The Index analysis offers a true lens into the dynamics of the new healthcare,” said Araby Thornewill, president of iVantage solutions. “Our focus is always to make the analysis relevant and actionable for today’s healthcare decision makers. This year, for example, we added an outpatient market ranking pillar, which captures the growth of outpatient services in the marketplace and serves as an important indicator for hospitals attempting to accurately assess their position.”
iVantage, US, Risk Management, Araby Thornewill
