Clinton Hospital Near Top in Novel Index
Article Source: State House News Service
Article By: Katie Lannan
SEPT. 30, 2020….Talk of the top hospital in Massachusetts usually conjures images of the large, prominent academic medical centers in Boston.
A new index that uses metrics not typically involved in hospital rankings bestows that designation somewhere else — namely, Leominster.
UMass Memorial HealthAlliance-Clinton Hospital leads the state in the new Lown Institute Hospitals Index, a ranking of 3,300 hospitals and 300 hospital systems launched this summer.
Discussing their findings in a webinar hosted Wednesday by the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium, Lown Institute officials said their national list is based on measures not contemplated in similar undertakings, like community benefits, pay equity and inclusivity. It also factors in mortality, readmissions, patient safety, patient satisfaction and avoiding overuse of procedures with little or no clinical benefit.
“It’s not necessarily the usual suspects that you’re going to find at the top of these rankings,” said Shannon Brownlee, the institute’s senior vice president.
Brownlee said hospitals need to be judged on the value of care they provide, the quality of that care and their role as civic leaders in the community.
The top hospital in the national rankings is JPS Health Netork in Fort Worth, Texas, and Bronwnlee said ten Massachusetts hospitals land in the top 100.
Along with the Leominster hospital — which is ranked number 8 nationwide — the other nine are Boston Medical Center (11), UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester (24), Winchester Hospital (48), Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital in Boston (53), Signature Health Care Brockton Hospital (75), Millford Regional Medical Center (86), Cambridge Health Alliance (88), Marlborough Hospital (94) and Baystate Wing Hospital and Medical Centers in Palmer (100).
Lown Institute President Dr. Vikas Saini said the index is meant to help shape a discussion around health care quality and unearth new ideas, rather than serve as a shopping guide for consumers.
“This is not a ranking to figure out where you want to get your knee done,” he said.
To come up with its findings on pay equity, the institute used public records, Internal Revenue Service nonprofit forms, and Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures to identify CEO compensation levels, then compared those to the pay of a hospital’s non-professional workers.
Saini said CEO pay is often a topic of hallway gossip, but is rarely the focus of systemic conversations.
Nantucket Cottage Hospital has the lowest gap between executive compensation and worker wages in the state, according to the index, followed by Cambridge Health Alliance and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
