The Premier Healthcare Alliance recognized 21 of the nation's top hospitals and three health systems for their commitment to outstanding patient care and operational efficiency with the 2010 Premier Award for Quality. Healthcare information technology underpins the patient care and organizational measures.

Premier announced the awards Wednesday at a ceremony in the nation's capital.

According to Susan DeVore, Premier president and CEO, there were 3,788 hospitals and 346 healthcare systems nationwide that were eligible to receive the AFQ. The award recognizes leading healthcare organizations that efficiently provide outstanding patient care and consistently set the standard in clinical excellence through using performance-based criteria, including clinical quality outcomes, resource utilization, and clinical process indicators.

All acute care inpatient facilities in the United States that submitted data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the CMS Hospital Compare project were considered for the AFQ, according to DeVore.

To determine winners, Premier used MedPar 2008 data to calculate quality and efficiency indexes for 62 disease groups and at the overall hospital level. Quality was measured by the incidence of three adverse outcomes: mortality, morbidity and complications, which were combined into a single quality index using preference weightings from the corporate hospital rating project. The efficiency index was generated using length of stay data, DeVore said.

The award-winning hospitals are listed on the next page.