Methodology:

The Data Advantage Hospital Value Index™ is the first comprehensive index to compare the value of care that hospitals provide. The 2009-2010 Hospital Value Index™ analyzes more than 4,500 general acute-care hospitals to offer the most comprehensive picture to date of a hospital’s value by measuring its success in the following key areas:

• Quality, including CMS’s Core Measures, patient safety, mortality and readmission rates;
• Affordability, a relative comparison of prices charged for inpatient and outpatient services,
• Efficiency, including the relative measure of the cost to the hospital for providing services; and
• Patient Satisfaction as measured by HCAHPS.

In addition, market-specific data on reputation of local hospitals are presented. All data used in the Hospital Value Index™ study are publicly available. Data Advantage did not use any proprietary data in compiling the Hospital Value Index™, including that owned and collected by Data Advantage for other business purposes.

Data Sources:

The data used for creation of the Hospital Value Index™ are available from government agency-run public sources. All available data were incorporated; no statistical sampling or projection methodology was deployed. No proprietary data unavailable to the public were used, including that owned and collected by Data Advantage for other business purposes. All data represent the most recently available as of July 20, 2009. While other competitors use data from as far back as 2007, we pride ourselves on using the most current data and updating our index as new data is released.

The following data sets were included in the 2009-2010 Hospital Value Index™:

• Medicare Provider Analysis and Review FFY 2008 (“MedPAR”) (release date: May 2009)
• Medicare Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) 2007 data set (release date: Oct 2008)
• Patient safety composite scores as defined by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Version 3.2a (release             date: Sept 2008)
• Medicare Hospital Cost Report Information System (HCRIS) Q1 2009 (release date: April 2009)
• All data from Hospital Compare (HCAHPS, Outcomes of Care, Core Measures) is from July 2009
               release of data.
• CMS Hospital Process of Care Measures (Core Measures) and Hospital Consumer Assessment of
               Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) (release date: July 2009)
• Re-admission rates have been supplied by CMS Hospital Outcome of Care Measures (release date: July
              2009)
• Data used in calculating post-discharge hospital mortality rates has been supplied by CMS Hospital
               Outcome of Care as the multi-year analysis of Medicare beneficiaries who die within 30-days of
               discharge from a hospital for a set of defined conditions. Measures (release date: July 2009)

Information regarding consumer perceptions is supplied by the Ticker(SM) Division of National Research Corporation that collects consumer preference and advocacy information from 300,000 households annually. The time period for this survey data is from May 2008 thru April 2009.

Description of Awards:

The Hospital Value Index™ is the leading tool to use existing performance metrics to create a value proposition for hospitals and their consumers. Our purpose in this third major release is to establish new benchmarks for value, report on the change in value market by market and to recognize those hospitals that are the best by revealing the following:

• Hospital Value Index™ - Best in Value™ (These are the highest value hospitals nationally)
• Hospital Value Index™ - Best Kept Secrets™ (These hospitals score well but are not well-known)
• Hospital Value Index™ - Market Rankings™ (These are market-specific leaders)
• Hospital Value Index™ - Friendliest Hospitals™ (These produce the highest patient satisfaction)
• Hospital Value Index™ - Most Improved™ (These are the most improved of the best)