Introducing new Academic Medical Center comparison group to enhance benchmarking across complex care environments

CHARLOTTE, N.C.: Premier, Inc., a leading technology-driven healthcare improvement company, today announced the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals®, with the full list of recognized hospitals published by Modern Healthcare.

For more than 30 years, the 100 Top Hospitals® program has produced annual, objective, quantitative analyses designed to identify the nation’s highest-performing hospitals and deliver insights that help healthcare organizations achieve consistent, balanced and sustainable high performance.

The program evaluates hospitals using publicly available data and recognizes those delivering strong performance across clinical outcomes, operational efficiency, patient experience, and financial health. In addition, every hospital included in the study, not just those recognized as winners, receives a complimentary, custom performance report at no cost. These reports compare each hospital’s performance to peers and top-performing organizations, helping leaders identify opportunities for improvement and drive performance transformation.

To determine this year’s winners, Premier researchers evaluated 2,540 short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals using publicly available data.

New for 2026: Academic Medical Center Comparison Group

The most significant change for 2026 is to the introduction of a dedicated Academic Medical Center (AMC) peer comparison group. Premier created this new group to better reflect the complexity of AMC patient populations and the unique missions of academic institutions in research, education and complex care delivery.

This new peer benchmark builds on Premier’s 100 Top Hospitals program by providing more meaningful comparisons for academic institutions. The AMC comparison group includes hospitals of any size, that serve as the primary teaching hospital for a Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) accredited medical school, as identified through publicly available data.

With the addition of the AMC comparison group, benchmark distribution for the Teaching Hospitals group was modified to reflect the combination of non-AMC hospitals previously included in both the large teaching and teaching categories.

Performance Impact

If all hospitals operated at the level of this year’s top performers, the impact for Medicare inpatients could include:

• More than 279,000 additional lives saved
• More than 477,000 additional patients’ complication-free
• More than $14.3 billion in inpatient cost savings
• More than 21,700 fewer patients readmitted within 30 days

“Premier’s 100 Top Hospitals program recognizes healthcare organizations that consistently deliver high-quality care while improving operational efficiency, financial performance and the patient experience,” said David Zito, President of Performance Services at Premier. “By highlighting top performers and providing transparent, data-driven insights, this program helps hospitals nationwide identify opportunities to enhance care delivery, strengthen financial sustainability and improve outcomes for the communities they serve.”

Performance of Premier’s 100 Top Hospitals®

This year’s benchmark hospitals outperformed peer hospitals across all ten performance measures and in every comparison group. Key findings from the 2026 study include:

• A 36.8 percent difference in inpatient mortality between benchmark hospitals and peer hospitals nationally.
• Small community hospitals demonstrated the largest inpatient mortality improvement, with a 49.3 percent difference between benchmark and peer hospitals.
• Teaching hospitals showed the largest difference in complications, with benchmark hospitals outperforming peers by 30 percent.
• Fifty-five hospitals recognized this year were repeat winners, reinforcing the role of strong system-level performance and sustained improvement strategies.
• AMC winners demonstrated strong performance against similarly complex peer institutions, highlighting the ability of leading academic organizations to balance research, education and highly specialized care while delivering strong clinical and operational outcomes.

Everest Award

In addition to recognizing top performers, Premier also announced the recipients of the 2026 100 Top Hospitals® Everest Award, which honors hospitals that achieved both benchmark performance and the fastest long-term improvement over five years.

This year, 24 hospitals earned the Everest Award designation, demonstrating exceptional and sustained progress across Premier’s balanced scorecard of performance measures.

“The Everest Award recognizes hospitals that not only achieve outstanding performance today but also demonstrate meaningful improvement over time,” said Zito. “These organizations exemplify what’s possible when leadership, clinical excellence and operational strategy align to drive sustained transformation.”

Study Methodology

Premier’s 100 Top Hospitals® program focuses on short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of patients. Researchers evaluated 2,540 hospitals using publicly available data sources from 2019 through 2024, including:

• Medicare Cost Reports
• Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MEDPAR) data
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Care Compare

Hospitals were evaluated using a balanced scorecard of ten performance measures, including:

• Inpatient Mortality Index
• Complications Index
• Healthcare-Associated Infections Index
• 30-Day Mortality Rate
• 30-Day Hybrid Hospital-Wide Readmission Rate
• Average Length of Stay
• Inpatient Expense per Discharge
• Medicare Spend Per Beneficiary
• Operating Profit Margin
• HCAHPS Top-Box Percent

Hospitals do not apply to participate in the study and winners do not pay to market the honor. All hospitals included in the analysis receive a complimentary, customized performance report at no cost comparing performance to peers and top-performing hospitals.

For more information, including the full list of winners and detailed methodology, visit www.modernhealthcare.com/awards/mh-premier-100-top-hospitals-2026/.

Methodology Note

Data sources included Medicare Cost Reports (2020–2024), Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MEDPAR) data (2019–2024), and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Care Compare data (2020–2024, 3-year datasets July 2017–June 2024, or 1-year datasets July 2023–June 2024, depending on measure).

About Premier, Inc.

Premier, Inc. is a leading technology-driven healthcare improvement company. Playing a critical role in the rapidly evolving healthcare industry, Premier unites providers, suppliers and payers to make healthcare better with national scale, smarter with actionable intelligence and faster with novel technologies. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Premier offers integrated data and analytics, collaboratives, supply chain solutions, advisory services and other solutions in service of our mission to improve the health of communities. Please visit Premier’s news site at www.premierinc.com; as well as X, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Premier’s blog for more information about the Company.

Fonte: Business Wire