Health Systems & Hospitals
Peer hospital comparison, HCAHPS domain analysis, cost-to-charge benchmarking, and physician workforce planning, board-ready in one conversation. Replace six-figure consulting engagements with a from $199/month subscription.
How it works
These are real reports generated from live CMS data. Ask Medistill to benchmark any hospital , it pulls the full CMS Hospital Compare profile in a single call, HCAHPS stars, excess readmission ratios (AMI, HF, PN, COPD, HIP_KNEE, CABG), HAI standardized infection ratios, PSI-90, Value-Based Purchasing Total Performance Score, MSPB vs national, plus cost reports and physician workforce.
Query
“Emory University Hospital Midtown is a ~500-bed teaching hospital in Atlanta. Find the 10 most similar hospitals nationally by profile, then compare us on overall quality rating, readmission rates, patient satisfaction, mortality, and hospital cost-to-charge ratio. Where are we winning and where are we falling behind?”
CMS Hospital Compare · Medicare Cost Reports FY2022 · HCAHPS Apr 2024 – Mar 2025 · Source: Medistill
Peer Hospital Comparison
| Hospital | State | CMS★ | Mort. | Readm. | Safety | Nurse★ | Dr.★ | Med.★ | Overall★ | Recommend★ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emory Univ. Midtown | GA | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Allegheny General | PA | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| NE Georgia Med. Center | GA | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Parkview Medical Center | CO | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Trinity Health Oakland | MI | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Ascension St. Vincent’s | FL | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| CHI St. Joseph Regional | TX | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Mercy Hospital South | MO | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| Baton Rouge General | LA | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 4 |
| MercyOne Des Moines | IA | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Adventist Shady Grove | MD | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
Excess Readmission Ratios, Emory vs Peer Median (lower is better)
| Condition | Emory ratio | Peer median | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMI (heart attack) | 0.964 | 0.986 | Better |
| CABG (bypass surgery) | 0.974 | 1.027 | Better |
| COPD | 1.030 | 0.979 | Lagging |
| Heart failure | 1.083 | 0.971 | Lagging |
| Hip/knee replacement | N/A | 1.093 | No data |
| Pneumonia | 1.007 | 0.985 | Slightly above |
HCAHPS Satisfaction, Emory Midtown Key Metrics (2024–25)
| Domain | Emory “Always” % | Star | vs Baton Rouge General (best peer) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nurse communication | 74% | ★★ | Peer has ★★★ |
| Doctor communication | 79% | ★★★ | At par |
| Medication communication | 52% | ★★ | Peer has ★★★ |
| Discharge information | 83% | ★★★ | Peer has ★★★★ |
| Room cleanliness | 65% | – | Below avg urban hospital |
| Overall hospital rating | – | ★★★ | Tied w/ most peers |
| Would recommend | – | ★★★★ | Top of peer group |
Financial Profile, FY2022 Cost Report
| Hospital | Net patient revenue | Beds | Revenue/bed | Operating income/(loss) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emory Univ. Midtown | $4.21B | 548 | $7.69M | ($210M) |
| Allegheny General | $3.70B | 528 | $7.00M | ($1M) |
| NE Georgia Med. Center | $6.77B | 645 | $10.49M | $68M |
| Parkview Medical | $3.07B | 253 | $12.14M | $21M |
| Trinity Health Oakland | $1.56B | 333 | $4.69M | ($35M) |
| Ascension St. Vincent’s | $3.03B | 362 | $8.37M | ($22M) |
| CHI St. Joseph Regional | $2.57B | 298 | $8.63M | ($154M) |
| Mercy Hospital South | $2.04B | 720 | $2.83M | ($7M) |
| Baton Rouge General | $1.23B | 251 | $4.89M | ($30M) |
| MercyOne Des Moines | $3.23B | 556 | $5.81M | ($36M) |
| Adventist Shady Grove | $531M | 381 | $1.39M | ($17M) |
Where Emory Midtown is winning vs. falling behind
Analysis
The short summary: You're holding your own on clinical safety and earning patient loyalty, but you're leaking on heart failure, nurse communication, and, notably, your operating margin.
Where Emory Midtown is winning: On mortality, Emory has zero measures rated worse than national average across all 7 tracked conditions. More distinctively, Emory has 2 safety measures rated “better than national,” matching the median peer performance. On readmissions, AMI (ERR 0.964) and CABG (ERR 0.974) are both below the peer group median. And despite the 2-star overall rating, patient likelihood to recommend scores a 4-star rating, tied for the top of the peer group alongside Ascension St. Vincent's, NE Georgia Medical Center, and Baton Rouge General.
Where Emory is falling behind: The three peers that have broken into 3-star territory, CHI St. Joseph (TX), Mercy Hospital South (MO), and Baton Rouge General (LA), are doing it primarily through patient experience and readmission control. The biggest gap for Emory is heart failure readmissions: an excess readmission ratio of 1.083 vs. a peer median of 0.971, the worst in the cohort. Nurse communication scores 2 stars (74% “always”), and medication communication is particularly weak at 52% “always,” with 37% of patients reporting staff “sometimes or never” discussed medication side effects.
On the financial side, the $210M operating loss in FY2022 is the largest deficit in the peer set by a substantial margin. Revenue per bed ($7.69M) is above median, so this is a cost structure issue, not a volume one.
The clearest path to 3 stars: Target heart failure readmissions + nurse communication. Those two levers have the highest weight in CMS's methodology and represent the sharpest gap vs. peers who've already moved up.
Follow-up query
“For the peer hospitals that outperform us on patient satisfaction, what do their HCAHPS domain scores look like? Is it communication, responsiveness, cleanliness, or pain management where they're ahead?”
HCAHPS data: Apr 2024 – Mar 2025 · All values are % responding “Always” or “Yes” · Source: Medistill
Medication communication is the sharpest single gap. Emory's score of 36% “always discussed side effects” is 10 percentage points below Baton Rouge General (46%) and 7pp below Allegheny (43%). This is the worst-performing sub-item across all four hospitals, and it pulls down the entire COMP-5 domain. A targeted improvement from 36% to the low-to-mid 40s would move Emory from the bottom of the pack to the middle on this domain.
Nurse communication is consistently 4–6pp below the top peers on every sub-item. Not by a lot on any single item, but the gap is systematic across listening, explaining, and respecting, which tells you this is a workflow and culture pattern, not a random variation. Baton Rouge General's nurses score higher on every single nurse sub-item.
Discharge completeness is a consistent 4–6pp gap vs. Baton Rouge and Allegheny. Especially the written symptom watch list (84% vs. 90%) and post-discharge help discussion (82% vs. 88%). These are structural process items: they happen or they don't, which means they're highly fixable with protocol changes rather than behavior change.
The good news: cleanliness and quietness are not the problem. Emory at 64% quiet-at-night actually beats Allegheny (50%) and Ascension (60%). Cleanliness is tied with Ascension at 65%, only Allegheny's 73% stands out.
The practical implication: Baton Rouge's 4-star rating is not the product of a better physical environment or superior physician communication. It's built on nurses being slightly but consistently more communicative and on staff doing a better job explaining medications. Those are behaviors that respond to standardized scripting, rounding protocols, and targeted coaching, which makes this an achievable improvement target.
Follow-up query
“Now show me the physician workforce around our hospital, how many specialists by type within our county, their average Medicare volume, and whether any have state board discipline or compliance flags.”
CMS Medicare Utilization Provider, 2022 · OIG LEIE · GA Composite Medical Board · Source: Medistill
| Specialty ↓ | Physicians | Volume | Avg beneficiaries | Avg Medicare paid | Total paid ($M) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internal Medicine | 554 | 215 | $59K | 32.7 | |
| Emergency Medicine | 329 | 255 | $40K | 13.1 | |
| Anesthesiology | 290 | 188 | $25K | 7.33 | |
| Diagnostic Radiology | 279 | 1,502 | $81K | 22.63 | |
| Hospitalist | 150 | 186 | $40K | 5.96 | |
| General Surgery | 144 | 113 | $47K | 6.7 | |
| Neurology | 122 | 190 | $63K | 7.66 | |
| Cardiology | 117 | 570 | $74K | 8.65 | |
| Ophthalmology | 108 | 543 | $471K | 50.84 | |
| Psychiatry | 100 | 71 | $26K | 2.6 | |
| Pathology | 96 | 588 | $58K | 5.59 | |
| Orthopedic Surgery | 94 | 215 | $101K | 9.51 | |
| Gastroenterology | 85 | 293 | $89K | 7.59 | |
| Nephrology | 80 | 238 | $102K | 8.19 | |
| Infectious Disease | 78 | 89 | $37K | 2.85 | |
| Dermatology | 76 | 507 | $179K | 13.62 | |
| Otolaryngology | 74 | 197 | $66K | 4.9 | |
| Pulmonary Disease | 54 | 163 | $42K | 2.26 | |
| Urology | 54 | 300 | $90K | 4.87 | |
| Hematology-Oncology | 49 | 219 | $284K | 13.92 | |
| Endocrinology | 43 | 281 | $77K | 3.31 | |
| Radiation Oncology | 40 | 128 | $231K | 9.23 | |
| Interventional Cardiology | 39 | 590 | $123K | 4.79 | |
| Neurosurgery | 39 | 129 | $80K | 3.1 |
Workforce depth: The Atlanta/Fulton physician workforce is deep on primary drivers for a hospital like Emory Midtown. Internal medicine leads at 554 physicians billing Medicare, followed by emergency medicine (329) and anesthesiology (290). The two most financially intensive specialties per physician are ophthalmology ($470K average Medicare payment) and hematology-oncology ($284K). Interventional cardiology (39 physicians) and neurosurgery (39) are the thinnest specialist pools relative to the care complexity they support, worth monitoring for recruitment and coverage risk.
OIG exclusions: There are 16+ currently active OIG exclusions for clinical physicians in GA with no reinstatement date. The most recent include a pain management physician (Talmadge, excluded June 2025 under 1128a1, Medicare fraud conviction), a psychiatrist (Lundgren, June 2025, license revocation), and a nephrologist (Okonkwo, January 2025). Federal regulations require hospitals to check LEIE before initial privileging and periodically thereafter.
Georgia Medical Board discipline: The GCMB currently shows 9 physicians on active probation (licensed but practicing under formal conditions), 9 suspended, and 9 revoked, all with discipline flags. The probation cohort is the most operationally relevant: these physicians hold valid Georgia licenses and may be in active practice or seeking privileges.
The practical credentialing implication: The exclusion list and board discipline list should be cross-referenced against Emory Midtown's current medical staff roster and any community physicians with active referring relationships or hospital-based privileges. Billing for services rendered by or arranged through an excluded provider is a False Claims Act exposure, regardless of whether the hospital knew.
What you can ask
Each question runs against real data. Follow-ups build on previous results , Medistill remembers context across the entire conversation.
Peer hospital benchmarking
“Find 10 hospitals most similar to ours nationally, then compare on quality ratings, readmission rates, HCAHPS satisfaction, mortality, and cost-to-charge ratios. Where are we winning and falling behind?”
Joins CMS Hospital Compare, HCAHPS, Cost Reports, and readmissions data into a single peer analysis no dashboard or consultant can replicate this fast.
“For the peers outperforming us on patient satisfaction, break down their HCAHPS domain scores, nurse communication, medication communication, discharge info. Where exactly is the gap?”
Drill into the specific HCAHPS sub-items driving the star gap, identifies the highest-leverage improvement targets.
“What would it take for us to move from 2 to 3 CMS stars? Which specific measures are dragging us down the most?”
Maps the CMS methodology to your specific data to show which measures have the highest weight and largest gap.
Without Medistill
Hire a consulting firm for $150K+ and wait 3 months. Or manually pull CMS data for each peer, build comparison spreadsheets, and hope the data is current.
Heart failure readmission root cause
“Our heart failure readmission rate is 1.083, worst in our peer group. Pull every heart failure discharge from our cost report data, compare post-discharge follow-up patterns with the 3 peers who have the best HF readmission ratios. What are they doing differently?”
Connects readmission data to operational patterns across peer hospitals, identifies what top performers do differently that your team can implement.
“For the hospitals with the lowest HF readmission ratios, what does their 30-day post-discharge care look like? Telehealth visits, home health referrals, cardiology follow-up rates?”
Surfaces the specific operational patterns that drive better outcomes, actionable for your care management team.
Without Medistill
Months of chart review, data requests to peer hospitals (who won’t share), and guesswork about what drives the gap.
Physician workforce & compliance screening
“Show the physician workforce in our county by specialty, count, average Medicare volume, and total Medicare payments. Then flag any with OIG exclusions, SAM.gov debarments, or state medical board discipline.”
Combines Medicare utilization, OIG LEIE, SAM.gov, and state board data in one query, surfaces compliance risks that would take days of manual cross-referencing.
“For the 9 physicians on active probation, cross-reference their license numbers against our current credentialing roster. Are any of them privileged at our facility?”
Directly connects state board discipline data to your credentialing workflow, surfaces active compliance exposure.
“Which specialist categories have the thinnest coverage in our county? If we lose one interventional cardiologist or neurosurgeon, what’s the impact on our call coverage?”
Quantifies workforce vulnerability by specialty, critical for recruitment planning and call coverage risk.
Without Medistill
Manual OIG LEIE checks one-by-one, separate state board lookups, no way to connect workforce supply to compliance risk in a single view.
Cost-to-charge benchmarking
“Pull our Medicare cost report alongside our 10 closest peer hospitals. Compare operating margins, revenue per bed, cost-to-charge ratios, and payer mix. Where are we spending more than peers for similar outcomes?”
Medicare Cost Reports are public but notoriously hard to analyze. Medistill normalizes and compares them automatically across your peer set.
“For the 3 peers with positive operating margins, what’s their payer mix vs ours? Is the margin difference driven by commercial volume or cost control?”
Separates revenue-side from cost-side drivers of margin differences, critical for strategic planning.
Without Medistill
Download raw cost reports from CMS, spend weeks normalizing across different fiscal years and reporting formats, or pay $80K+ for a benchmarking subscription.
HCAHPS improvement targeting
“We need to move our nurse communication score from 2 stars to 3 stars. Find every hospital nationally that made this exact improvement in the last 2 years, what did their other HCAHPS scores look like before and after? Did the improvement come from one sub-item or across the board?”
Identifies real-world improvement examples instead of theoretical benchmarks, shows what hospitals like yours actually did to move the needle.
“For the hospitals that improved nurse communication by ≥1 star, did their readmission rates also improve? Is there a correlation between HCAHPS improvement and clinical outcomes?”
Tests whether HCAHPS improvement translates to clinical outcomes, builds the ROI case for patient experience investment.
Without Medistill
No existing tool tracks HCAHPS score changes over time at the domain level. Would require downloading multiple years of HCAHPS data and building custom trend analysis.
Predictive risk intelligence
Our predictive model scores every US acute care and critical access hospital on financial distress risk , trained on 7 years of Medicare cost reports, quality metrics, and community data. Walk-forward validated: train on year N, predict distress in year N+1.
Each hospital gets a 0–100 risk score with a letter grade and plain-language explanations. High scores mean the model sees patterns, margin decline, volume erosion, rising expenses , that historically precede financial distress within 12 months.
6,170
Hospitals scored
55
Risk features
7 years
Cost report history
12 mo
Forward prediction
Model trained on cost reports through year N, predicts which hospitals enter financial distress in year N+1.
| Prediction Year | Hospitals Tested | Distress Rate | Training Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 6,232 | 15.0% | 2018–2019 |
| 2022 | 6,200 | 22.9% | 2018–2020 |
| 2023 | 6,152 | 19.8% | 2018–2021 |
| 2024 | 5,860 | 16.3% | 2018–2022 |
What this means: Roughly 1 in 5 US hospitals show signs of financial distress each year. The model identifies high-risk hospitals 12 months before distress becomes public , giving health plans, investors, and supply chain teams early warning to act.
What the model looks at, 55 features across 4 categories
Cost Report Financials
29 featuresOperating margin, margin trend, revenue per discharge, expense growth, bed occupancy
Quality & Safety
15 featuresStar rating, HCAHPS scores, readmission rates, mortality, patient safety indicators
Community Context
8 featuresCounty median income, population, unemployment rate, rural/urban classification
Interaction Effects
3 featuresMargin × occupancy, volume × expense trends, quality × financial stress
Top risk drivers, ranked by predictive importance
Why switch
Peer hospital matching
Peer hospital matching
Manual selection, subjective
AI-powered similarity search across 7K+ hospitals
HCAHPS domain analysis
HCAHPS domain analysis
Download raw data, build spreadsheets
Ask a question, get domain-by-domain comparison
Readmission benchmarking
Readmission benchmarking
Aggregate reports only
Condition-level ERR comparison with peer context
Cost report analysis
Cost report analysis
Weeks of normalization
Instant peer comparison, normalized
Physician workforce
Physician workforce
County health department reports
Real-time Medicare utilization + compliance flags
Compliance screening
Compliance screening
Manual OIG + state board checks
130+ databases, instant, with risk scoring
Joint Commission accreditation
Joint Commission accreditation
Call QualityCheck.org, one hospital at a time
Lookup by name or CCN against 15,754 JC-accredited orgs, accreditation-type detail
Dashboards
Dashboards
Pre-built templates, IT tickets
Ask for a dashboard, generated instantly
Reports
Reports
Manual exports, copy-paste
"Turn this into a report", formatted, downloadable
Modifications
Modifications
New query, start over
"Filter to cardiac surgery only", refine by asking
Scheduled monitoring
Scheduled monitoring
Not available or enterprise add-on
Schedule any query daily/weekly via Claude
Price
Price
$100K–$300K/yr consulting + data subscriptions
From $199/mo
Predictive risk scoring
Predictive risk scoring
Not available
AI model trained on 7 years of cost reports, 12-month forward prediction
Data coverage
Benchmark Against Peers
Track Financial Performance
Map Your Workforce
Screen for Compliance Risk
7,000+ hospitals, 9.4M providers, and complete quality benchmarking , all queryable through AI at from $199/month.