Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee has been named one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals® according to an independent quality analysis provided by Premier, Inc. This is the eleventh time that the hospital has earned the recognition.
This year marks the first time that Riverside Medical Center is the only hospital in Illinois to receive the 100 Top Hospitals® honor. 
Hospitals are named to the list following an objective, quantitative analysis of publicly available data to identify the top hospitals in the United States. The primary purpose of Premier’s 100 Top Hospitals® program is to inspire hospital and health system leaders to pursue higher performance and deliver added value to patients and communities. Participation in the study is not application-based, and award winners do not pay to market their honor.
“It is truly an honor to have earned this important designation,” said Riverside President and CEO Phil Kambic. “This points to the focus we place on providing the highest quality care. It is also a testament to our amazing staff. The doctors, nurses and entire staff are dedicated to getting the best outcome for each patient and providing the best experience for the patient and their family.”
This year’s analysis compared the study’s top-performing hospitals to a peer group of similar hospitals and found that Premier’s 100 Top Hospitals® delivered better outcomes while operating more efficiently. Compared to their peers, this year’s top performers achieved:
- 39 percent fewer inpatient deaths than peer hospitals.
- 26.5 percent fewer patients with complications.
- 32 percent fewer healthcare-associated infections (HAIs).
- 18 percent lower inpatient expense per discharge.
- 0.4-day shorter average length of stay.
- A better patient experience at top-performing hospitals compared to the remaining peer hospitals, with a top-box Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) score of 73 percent versus 68 percent at peer hospitals.
These outcomes add up to meaningful differences. According to the study’s analysis, if all hospitals operated at the level of this year’s top performers, more than 331,000 additional lives could have been saved, over 611,000 additional patients could have been complication-free and more than $15.1 billion in inpatient costs could have been saved for the 2025 study year.
This analysis is based on Medicare patients included in this study. If the same standards were applied to all inpatients, the impact could have been even greater.
“Premier’s 100 Top Hospitals® program recognizes the dedication of our nation’s top hospitals to consistently deliver high-quality care while working to continuously improve quality, patient experience and operational efficiency,” said David Zito, Premier’s President of Performance Services. “The program’s transparent, non-biased and actionable data helps set benchmarks for hospitals nationwide and enables leaders to make data-driven decisions that benefit patients and the health of communities we serve. Riverside Medical Center excels across key performance indicators, which can directly lead to higher quality patient outcomes, with fewer readmissions and complications.”
About the Study
Premier’s 100 Top Hospitals® program focuses on short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of patients. Researchers evaluated 2,599 short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals and health systems. All research was based on the following public data sets: Medicare cost reports, Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MEDPAR) data, and data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Care Compare website.
Eligible hospitals are ranked for performance across nine measures within five domains.
Final rank is determined based on performance for all individual measures. To allow for fair comparison, hospitals are stratified and then ranked within five separate peer groups with a pre-determined number of high-performing hospitals: major teaching hospitals, teaching hospitals, large community hospitals, medium community hospitals and small community hospitals. Riverside Medical Center was recognized in the teaching hospitals category.