GRIFFITH AND ALEXANDER
TO RECEIVE ACHE'S HAYHOW AWARD

CHICAGO, February 17, 2003—John R. Griffith, FACHE, and Jeffrey A. Alexander, Ph.D., are the winners of the American College of Healthcare Executives 2003 Edgar C. Hayhow Award for their article "Measuring Comparative Hospital Performance." The article appeared in the January/February 2002 issue of the Journal of Healthcare Management.

The award will be presented on Tuesday, March 18, 2003, at the Malcolm T. MacEachern Memorial Lecture and Luncheon during the American College of Healthcare Executives 46th Congress on Healthcare Management at the Hilton Chicago.

ACHE grants the Hayhow Award annually to the author(s) of an article judged the best from among those published in the Journal of Healthcare Management, ACHE's official journal.

Named in honor of ACHE's 14th Chairman, the Edgar C. Hayhow Award recognizes outstanding contributions to healthcare management literature. The article was selected by ACHE's Article of the Year Awards Committee.

In their article, Griffith and Alexander describe a study that evaluates the effectiveness of the "balanced scorecard" method of performance measurement now used by many healthcare providers. The method involves developing and comparing a set of organizational performance measures against competitors and the general healthcare field-as well as against organizational benchmarks-to assess effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. The authors evaluated a set of nine hospital performance measures derived from Medicare reports: cash flow, asset turnover, mortality, complications, length of inpatient stay, cost per case, occupancy, change in occupancy, and percent of revenue from outpatient care. Each measure was examined for content validity, reliability and sensitivity, validity of comparison, and independence.

Griffith and Alexander's study found that seven of the nine performance measures were acceptable measures; that is, the measures indicate relative performance on important objectives, and can be used by hospital boards to identify and prioritize areas for improvement. The authors conclude that a Medicare-based measurement set can help most hospitals achieve their organizational goals by suggesting realistic improvement opportunities.

Board certified in healthcare management and an ACHE Fellow, Griffith is an ACHE Gold Medal Award winner; this is the second time he has received the Hayhow Award. Griffith is Andrew Pattullo Collegiate Professor and Alexander is Richard C. Jelinek Professor of Healthcare Management and Policy at The University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor.

CONTACT: Deborah A. Labb, (312) 424-9426

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