Becker's Hospital Review

30 POPULATION HEALTH 30 CEO/STRATEGY 15 top health systems, ranked by IBM Watson Health By Ayla Ellison I BM Watson Health released its annual 15 top health systems ranking, recognizing the top-performing health systems in the U.S. To determine the health systems included on the list, IBM Watson Health researchers evaluated 332 health systems and 2,492 hospitals that are part of health systems, using publicly available clinical, operational and patient satisfaction datasets. Compared with similar health systems, the 15 on this year's list had better results on several clinical and operational benchmarks, including 30-day readmission rates, length of stay and lower epi- sode-of-care expenses. If all Medicare patients received the same level of care as those treated at the health systems on this year's list, more than 43,000 more lives could be saved and healthcare-associated infections could be reduced by 12 percent, according to IBM Wat- son Health. Below are the 15 health systems on this year's list. e health systems are listed by category. Large Health Systems Baylor Scott & White Health (Dallas) CHI Health (Omaha, Neb.) HCA Continental Division (Denver) Kettering Health Network (Dayton, Ohio) UCHealth (Aurora, Colo.) Medium Health Systems Edward-Elmhurst Health (Naperville, Ill.) HealthPartners (Bloomington, Minn.) Parkview Health (Fort Wayne, Ind.) Saint Luke's Health System (Kansas City, Mo.) St. Luke's Health System (Boise, Idaho) Small Health Systems Asante (Medford, Ore.) Aspirus (Wausau, Wis.) Genesis Health System (Davenport, Iowa) Maury Regional Health (Columbia, Tenn.) Saint Alphonsus Health System (Boise, Idaho) n Trump administration asks Supreme Court to strike down ACA Ayla Ellison T he Trump administration asked the Supreme Court June 25 to strike down the ACA, telling the court that the entire healthcare law "must fall." In a brief filed June 25, Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco argues the ACA's tax penalty for failing to purchase medical insurance is unconsti- tutional; therefore, the entire ACA should be invalidated. Mr. Francisco argues that the individual mandate became unconstitutional when Con- gress eliminated the tax penalty in 2017. "Nothing the 2017 Congress did demonstrates it would have intended the rest of the ACA to continue to operate in the absence of these ... integral provisions," states the brief. "The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate." After the brief was filed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., respond- ed in a statement: "President Trump and the Republicans' campaign to rip away the protections and benefits of the Affordable Care Act in the middle of the coronavirus crisis is an act of unfathomable cruelty." The administration's brief was filed in Texas v. United States in support of a challenge to the ACA by a group of Republican attorneys general. Oral arguments are scheduled for next term, and a decision in the case may not come until next year, according to The Washington Post. n Montefiore CEO: I fought COVID-19 and racism, and only beat one By Morgan Haefner P hilip Ozuah, MD, PhD, president and CEO of Montefiore Medicine, wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times that as the head of a ma- jor hospital in New York City and a Black man, he has fought two plagues: COVID-19 and racism. But he has only beat the former. Dr. Ozuah's hospital was ravaged by COVID-19. More than 2,200 pa- tients and 21 staff members died from the novel coronavirus between mid-March and June 9 in what Dr. Ozuah described as 12 weeks that will haunt him "forever." But as the hospital's COVID-19 caseload drops, "the nation is coming to grips with another fearful crisis," he wrote, the "lethal effects of racism, the pain of which is all too familiar to me." Dr. Ozuah wrote about his experience as a Black man, how he was stopped while walking through a white neighborhood in Los Angeles to catch a bus; pulled over "almost daily because you're young and you're Black and you're male and you're driving a late-model automobile," and being mistaken for a coat checker at a gala. "I know the cumulative burden of those experiences day after day, week after week, month after month, decade after decade," he wrote, adding, "I see rare hope that these twin disasters disproportionate- ly hurting minorities — one a brand-new virus and the other a virus as old as the country itself — could finally prove the true strength of our shared humanity." n

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