Hospitals with top clinical outcomes often don’t score well in equity metrics, rankings find

Originally posted on Healthcare Dive The rankings, now in their second year, are meant to take a broader look at how hospitals serve their communities by looking at more than just outcome metrics.

Dive Brief:

• Only 75 of the 3,000 hospitals ranked by the Lown Institute Hospitals Index scored top marks across all the metrics meant to evaluate social responsibility: equity, value and outcomes, according to a report out Tuesday.
• None of the top 20 hospitals from the U.S. News & World Report rankings made the cut to the honor roll, largely because of low grades in equity, Lown Institute said.
• The report also ranked states by which had the most socially responsible hospitals. Topping the list were Hawaii, Delaware, Washington D.C., Oregon and Colorado while at the bottom were Kentucky, Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas.

Dive Insight:

The rankings, now in their second year, are meant to take a broader look at how hospitals serve their communities by looking at more than just outcome metrics.

"We think that hospitals represent really kind of probably the central part, certainly the most visible and the most active part, of all of American healthcare," Lown Institute President Vikas Saini said. "And to get a better healthcare system, hospitals absolutely have to be part of the solution."

More ranking methods are attempting to include metrics related to social justice and responsibility. U.S. News this year published health equity metrics alongside its ranking, along with nurse staffing and overuse.

The outcomes bucket of metrics includes patient satisfaction and safety, while the value branch looks at cost efficiency and avoiding overuse. For equity, the rankings judge inclusivity, pay equity and community benefit.

Topping the list for the equity measures was Metropolitan Hospital Center in New York City, followed by Highland Hospital in Oakland, California and Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in New York.

Among the largest hospital systems, those that got an overall score of A were Prime Healthcare, Trinity Health, CommonSpirit Health and Ascension Healthcare.

Saini noted that the individual hospitals on the honor roll were not particularly well-known names. "That was the goal of our whole exercise was to really begin to shine a spotlight on hospitals that might be doing things in a way that hadn't yet been really discovered or recognized," he said.

The Mayo Clinic, which U.S. News has named the top hospital for six years in a row, received an overall grade of A but got a C in the equity rankings, with a particularly low mark for community benefit.