It’s become survival of the fittest for American hospitals. Still operating in the long shadow of the pandemic, amid labor shortages, rising costs, and the loss of government COVID-19 relief funds, the industry is also contending with more lasting change like cyberthreats and the continued migration of services to outpatient settings.
Not all will make it: Hospital closures and bankruptcies are markedly up this year; many others, particularly America’s rural hospitals, are under serious strain. That backdrop makes this year’s Fortune/PINC AI 100 Top Hospitals list, which crunches the numbers to identify America’s best performers all the more salient. In a field of 2,644 short-term, acute care non-federal US hospitals, these 100 organizations—which represent teaching and community hospitals of various sizes—stand apart and serve as guides for the broader industry.
These hospitals bested their peers on all measures, which included patient outcomes and experience, operational efficiency, financial health, and community impact. And according to PINC AI’s analysis, there’s much to gain in following their lead: If all hospitals performed at the same level as the Top 100, more than 272,000 additional lives would be saved in the hospital and more than 432,000 additional patients would be spared complications as a result of care. $15.7 billion in inpatients costs would be avoided.
Fifty-one of the winning hospitals appeared on last year’s list. As is the case every year, hospitals do not apply for the Top 100 award, and winners do not pay to market this honor.
This year’s study, which was based on publicly available Medicare data from 2021, showed little change from 2020 for the industry on most measures. The one exception for hospitals in the study was profit margin, which increased significantly due to COVID-19 relief dollars hospitals received that year. Those pandemic funds are gone, of course, raising the stakes for hospitals to be at the top of their game.—Erika Fry, senior writer, Fortune
Below, find where the top hospitals in each category are located, then click through to each of the sublists (teaching and community), which also highlight this year's Everest award winners. (See our methodology here).
Fortune/PINC AI 100 Top Hospitals
PREMIER, PINC AI, 100 TOP HOSPITALS, and 50 TOP CARDIOVASCULAR HOSPITALS are registered/unregistered trademarks of Premier Healthcare Alliance, L.P. in the United States.
