NEW BEDFORD, Mass. – Southcoast Health today announced that it has been 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 the findings as part of its new publication: State of the Hospital Industry – 2015 Edition. Written by William O. Cleverley, Ph.D., a noted expert in healthcare finance, the State of the Hospital Industry reports selected measures of hospital financial performance and discusses the critical factors that lie behind them. The publication focuses on the US acute-care hospital industry over a three-year time period (2011-13).
For the twelfth year, the 2015 State of the Hospital Industry reports an exclusive measure developed by Cleverley + Associates: the Community Value Index (CVI). The CVI is a proprietary index created to offer a measure of the value that a hospital provides to its community. The report outlines the data used to calculate the CVI as well as provides a list of the top 100 hospitals.

“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.”