Thompson Hospital was recently recognized as a top-ranked Community Value Provider by Cleverley + Associates, a leading healthcare financial consulting firm specializing in operational benchmarking and performance enhancement strategies.
Cleverley + Associates released its findings as part of its new publication: State of the Hospital Industry - 2013 Edition. Focusing on the US acute-care hospital industry over a three-year time period (2009- 2011), the publication reports selected measures of hospital financial performance and discusses the critical factors that lie behind them.
A proprietary index featured in the report, the Community Value Index® (CVI), offers a measure of the value a hospital provides to its community. Thompson and other hospitals achieving CVI scores within the top quintile (20 percent) of all hospitals within their group were designated as Community Value Five-Star Hospitals®.
“We view this recognition as confirmation of what we are striving for at Thompson – high-quality, cost-effective healthcare for the patients we serve,” said Thompson Health President/CEO Michael F. Stapleton, Jr.
James Cleverley, co-author of the State of the Hospital Industry - 2013 Edition, said with the topic of hospital value increasingly discussed, issues of pricing and community benefit have been well-publicized but little has been offered to measure the broad scope of value. In response, the CVI was created to provide an assessment of a hospital’s performance in four areas: financial strength and reinvestment, cost of care, pricing, and quality.
“Fundamentally,” Cleverley said, “the CVI suggests that a hospital provides value to the community when it is financially viable, is appropriately reinvesting back into the facility, maintains a low cost structure, has reasonable charges, and provides high quality care to patients.”
Thompson Health Senior Vice President of Finance/CFO Mark Prunoske said as Ontario County’s largest employer, Thompson Health continues to invest in its growth and the programs it offers to the community. According to Prunoske, Thompson has invested $60 million in enhancements to the hospital over the past 10 years. In addition, the hospital provides a number of community benefit programs, such as support groups and educational offerings. In 2012 alone, this community benefit programming was worth an estimated $2,248,000.
“Our ability to offer high-quality, cost-effective healthcare positions us well for the changes that are coming to healthcare providers under healthcare reform,” Prunoske said.