News: Most health systems include only small number of facilities

More than half of the 626 health systems in the United States have only one or two hospitals within the system, but the largest systems have 18 or more hospitals, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) “Compendium of U.S. Health Systems, 2016.”

However, the largest 5% of health systems account for 42.8% of hospitals in systems at all, according to the AHRQ’s summary and analysis of the compendium results.

Similarly, the 10 largest health systems (based on the number of beds) accounts for 24.5% of all beds in systems, according to the summary.

Of course, for CDI professionals, the prevalence of health systems in general can pose a significant stumbling block for uniform education. CDI program managers over multi-facility systems often struggle to overcome hospital cultures, collaborative climates, query practice policies and procedures, and productivity expectations. Mergers and acquisitions of hospitals by larger systems may also represent periods of uncertainty for established programs as staff wait to learn of reporting structure shifts and potential staffing consolidation.

Editor’s note: To read the full compendium from AHRQ, click here. To read the snapshot document, click here. To read how some CDI programs are using CDI educators to handle education across systems, click here.