Consulting firm ranks St. Joseph Health, St. Mary as top ‘Community Value Provider’
From staff reports
St. Mary Medical Center was recently recognized as a top ranked Community Value Provider by Cleverley & Associates. Cleverley & Associates, a leading health care financial consulting firm specializing in operational benchmarking and performance enhancement strategies, released the findings as part of its new publications: State of the Hospital Industry — 2014 Edition.
Written by William O. Cleverely, Ph.D., a noted expert in health care finance, the State of the Hospital Industry reports select measures of hospital financial performance and discuss the critical factors that lie behind them. The publication focuses on the US acute-care hospital industry over a three-year period.
“The topic of hospital value is increasingly being discussed. Issues of pricing and community benefit have been well-publicized but little has been offered to measure the broad scope of value,” said James Cleverley, co-author. “In response, the Community Value Index 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, 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.”
A news release from the consulting firm notes that measurements in the four areas result in recognizing hospitals that are low cost, low charge and use a strong financial position to reinvest back into the provision of care at the facility.
“Each area contains metrics that compare a hospital’s performance to an appropriate peer group,” the release states. “Those hospitals with scores in the top 20 percent are designated as ‘Community Value Five-Star’ facilities.”
The Apple Valley hospital achieved the five-star designation.
Visit www.cleverleyassociates.com for more on the consulting firm, or www.stmaryapplevalley.com for more on the hospital.