AMERICA'S BEST - Hospitals

U.S. News and World Report and Modern Healthcare in conjunction with Thomson Reuters both prepare an annual report of America's Top 100 and "Best" Hospitals.

You will find information on this annual ranking at health usnews website

These annual reports and rankings allow us to identify those areas, processes, policies, and leadership styles that signal the "best practices" and benchmarking standards for the American healthcare field.

As a starting point for your assessment of these "Best of the Best" healthcare organizations, please examine the 2017/18 Top 100 list and research what makes these indeed the "best."

Complete an in-depth analysis of two of the hospitals on this list. You will find hospitals of all sizes and with various specialties and all will have websites of their own.

Be sure to address the following:
- Carefully examine the organizations, looking for traits that put these hospitals on the list. You will want to examine your chosen facilities in all the areas we will study: leadership, quality, financial, etc. One of the most important lessons is that there are as many dis-similarities as there are similarities in the listings and between the facilities.

- Look for common threads. Are there specific sets of actions undertaken by a majority of the organizations (i.e. clinical practices, leadership approaches, team management, communication, financial strategies, etc.)? Note these in your analysis. While it may be unusual for the identical action to occur with different hospitals, the type of action and the trends toward Leadership and Group Behavior may or may not be similar.

- Include in your analysis the characteristics you found to be most unique, unusual, creative or surprising. Review clinical outcomes, customer satisfaction levels, employee retention strategies, financial viability, and methods of communication and / problems solving that take them to the top level.

- Each hospital you evaluate should have a review that includes:

o Brief description (bed size, number of employees, gross revenue and other unique characteristics
o Hospital's Mission Statement
o Methods of Communication/Leadership (consider here what you learn about the theories of leadership and styles of communication)
o Morale Indicators
o Customer Satisfaction Levels
o Your comments in regard to why this facility should or should not be on the list of "Best" hospitals.

Hint: Dig deep to learn specifics about your chosen facilities. You may not learn it all from the website. What else can you do?