The 100 Top Hospitals recognized this week by Truven Health Analytics boast shorter lengths of stay, fewer complications, lower 30-day readmission rates.

Truven – formerly the healthcare business of Thomson Reuters, now reportedly prepping for its own IPO – has named its top hospitals for more than two decades, evaluating them on measures of overall organizational performance, as well as long-term rates of improvement.

Truven Health researchers took a look at 3,000 short-term, acute-care, non-federal hospitals, using public information – Medicare cost reports, Medicare Provider Analysis and Review data, and core measures and patient satisfaction data from the CMS Hospital Compare website.

Measures are equally weighted, and hospitals are compared with similar facilities in terms of size and teaching status, Truven officials say – noting that the rankings' criteria and methodologies have been tapped by the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology to validate performance of its Baldrige Award winners.

This year's winners demonstrate roughly half-day shorter lengths of stay, 4 percent fewer complications, and 5.9 percent lower risk-adjusted mortality rates, say Truven officials. Winners also outperformed their peers on 30-day readmissions for heart failure, heart attack and other conditions.

Fourteen of this year’s top hospitals were based in California; Ohio and Illinois had the second-most, with 10 each.

“The 2015 100 Top study results have identified 100 hospitals that have been objectively proven to provide high value to their communities," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president of Truven's 100 Top Hospitals Programs, in a press statement.

"Employers and payers are increasingly seeking network hospitals that consistently provide high value — hospitals that deliver higher quality, higher satisfaction and lower cost," she added. "The 100 Top Hospitals study is designed to identify highly effective leadership teams that have achieved high performance across the whole hospital’s balanced performance clinically, operationally and financially, and have generated high patient perception of care."

Truven's 100 Top Hospitals can be seen on the next page.