Comparing apples to apples: the relative financial performance of Manitoba's acute care hospitals.

This paper presents comparative financial ratios that can be adopted by health system administrators and policy analysts to begin to evaluate the performance of acute care hospitals. We combined financial, statistical and clinical information for 73 acute care hospitals in Manitoba for fiscal 1997/98 to calculate 15 indicators of financial performance. Our findings suggest that there is variability between hospital types in their average costs per weighted case, cost structure and financial performance.