Union Hospital is pleased to be recognized by Thomson Reuters as one of the nation's top 100 hospitals of 2008.

National award winners have higher survival rates, keep more patients complication-free, and attract more patients - all while maintaining financial stability. We estimate that if all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as those in the 100 Top Hospitals winners:

• More than 107,500 additional patients would survive each year
• More than 132,000 patient complications would be avoided annually
• Expenses would decline by an aggregate $5.9 billion a year
• The average patient stay would decrease by nearly half a day

The 100 Top Hospitals award winners also reward their employees with better pay: have better patient safety, saving lives and dollars; and have higher patient satisfaction, overall.

How the 100 Top Hospitals are identified.

Building the database of hospitals, including special selection and exclusion criteria, the Thomson Reuters study focuses on short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of patients. Data comes from public sources including the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) data set, and the Medicare Cost Report.

Classifying hospitals into comparison groups according to bed size and teaching status:

• Major Teaching Hospitals
• Teaching Hospitals
• Large Community Hospitals
• Medium Community Hospitals
• Small Community Hospitals

Methods

For the past decade, the healthcare business of Thomson Reuters has consistently identified benchmark practices by using solely objective statistical analyses of public data sources, and by constantly improving and refining the study performance measures, thresholds for inclusion, and methodologies.

Hospitals are scored on a set of weighted performance measures centered on clinical excellence, operating efficiency and financial health, and patient satisfaction:

• Risk-adjusted mortality index
• Risk-adjusted complications index
• Risk-adjusted patient safety index
• Core Measures score
• Severity-adjusted average length of stay
• Expense per adjusted discharge, case mix- and wage-adjusted
• Profitability (operating profit margin)
• Cash to total debt ratio
• HCAHPS score (patient rating of overall hospital performance)