Being on the Productivity Frontier: Identifying “Triple Aim Performance” Hospitals

Hospital decision-makers face trade-offs that make it difficult to obtain the trifecta of high performance on clinical quality, patient experience, and technical efficiency. We use the term "triple aim performance" (TAP) to refer to the simultaneous achievement of these three goals. Using datasets from 2010 and 2012 and data envelopment analysis, we identify about 20 triple aim performance hospitals in each year among U.S. acute care hospitals with at least 200 beds. We also examine factors that influence the probability of being a TAP hospital. We find that the percentage of physicians employed by the hospital has a positive and significant relationship with TAP, and that bed utilization rate has a positive relationship with technical efficiency, but a negative relationship with clinical quality and patient experience performance.