St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center is among the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals® for 2018 according to IBM Watson Health™.

The annual study determined top hospitals like St. Luke’s Boise have better risk-adjusted outcomes while maintaining a lower average cost per patient than other hospitals not on the list. Researchers say that’s helped to raise the bar for health care and improve the overall experiences for people winning hospitals care for in their communities.

Each year, the study works to identify the highest-performing hospitals in the U.S. based on overall organizational performance. Looking at 2,740 hospitals, researchers create a scorecard of 11 clinical, operational and patient satisfaction metrics and data that are all publicly available. Included are benchmarks like mortality, complications, health care-associated infections, readmission rates, length of stay, emergency department wait times and Medicare spending.

The most-significant key performance measures for 100 Top Hospitals versus non-winning peer group hospitals include:

• Better Survival Rates: Overall, winners achieved survival rates that were 26 percent better.
• Fewer Complications and Infections: Patients at winning hospitals experienced 13.4 percent fewer complications and 18.7 percent fewer healthcare-associated infections.
• Shorter Length of Stay: Winning hospitals had a median severity-adjusted length of stay that was nearly one half-day shorter (0.4) than peers.
• Shorter Emergency Department Wait Times: Overall, winning hospitals delivered median emergency department wait times that were 17 minutes shorter.
• Lower Inpatient Expenses: Average inpatient costs per discharge were 7 percent lower (a difference of $460 per discharge) at 100 Top Hospitals.
• Higher Profit Overall Margins: Winning hospitals maintained a median operating profit margin that was 10.6 percentage points higher.
• Higher Patient Satisfaction: Overall hospital experience, as measured by the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS), was rated 3.4 percent higher for winning hospitals.

If all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as those treated in the award-winning facilities, the study says:

• More than 102,000 additional lives could be saved;
• More than 43,000 additional patients could be complication-free;
• More than $4.4 billion in inpatient costs could be saved; and
• Approximately 200,000 fewer discharged patients would be readmitted within 30 days.

St. Luke’s is listed in the “Teaching Hospitals” category of the 100 Top Hospitals study for 2018. The study has been conducted since 1993, and was previously done under the name of Truven Health Analytics®. Hospitals do not apply for awards, and winners do not pay to market this honor.