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The Lown Institute, located in Boston, is a nonprofit think tank focusing on “improving medicine’s culture.” More than just a measure of community benefit, their Hospital Social Responsibility Index tries to capture the quality, affordability, and equitability of both a hospital’s care and its overall business practices. Among top performers honored in the 2024 kickoff is Adventist Health Ukiah Valley, ranking #4 in the nation for providing equitable, excellent, high-value care. While the 2024 report adopted methodology improvements to increase the applicability and accuracy of its rankings, how the Lown Institute calculates equity—particularly around community investments—continues to exclude critical metrics. Despite these issues, Index rankings still hold sway both with legislators and media outlets. Along with the Social Responsibility Index, the Lown Institute researches hospital’s spending, racial inclusivity in inpatient care, and overuse of costly procedures. Key Things to Know- Each year Lown makes changes to the methodology it uses to grade hospitals. While the institute says this these changes are made to improve accuracy and usability, it also makes the data difficult to compare with previous years and has opened Lown up to criticism that it adjusts its methodology to meet political goals. This year’s updates reflect the increased political and social attention being paid to the true value of not-for-profit hospitals.
- Hospital leaders should be informed about their facility’s performance on this and future Lown rankings, remembering that some aspects of the Index’s metrics are not yet ready to be used as a stand-alone measurement tool in the way that Leapfrog can be used. To see your hospital’s performance, click here.
- Faith-based, not-for-profit health systems score as well or better than their peers on social responsibility. This is the first time that the Lown Institute includes a filter to identify faith-based hospitals and for-profit hospitals, facilitating comparisons.
- For-profit hospitals underperformed compared to their not-for-profit peers. Despite making up only 18% of hospitals graded, for-profits earned 36% of “D” grades.
AHPA extends our gratitude to Hanniah Greene, guest coauthor of this article. Hanniah is a health policy and administration student at Oakwood University.