IASIST presents in Madrid the ninth edition of Hospitals TOP 20. In this edition, the figures for participation in IASIST's Hospitals TOP 20 were similar to those of previous years, with 147 centres represented from all over Spain: 120 from the public sector, representing over 47% of the total number of hospitals in the National Health System (Sistema National de Salud: SNS), and 27 from the private sector.

The hospitals that make up the TOP 20 for 2008 were those that had the best results after evaluation of the following indicators: indices of mortality, complications and readmissions, with regard to quality of care; the mean length-of-stay of inpatient admissions, the rate of day-surgery ,and the cost per unit of production, as efficiency performance indicators.

The clinical area evaluated in this edition was the nervous system, covering 126 hospitals that treated 43,095 pathological episodes in 2007 relating to the nervous system. Specifically, the TOP 20 programme analysed indicators of care quality and of efficiency in the management of cases of patients hospitalised because of stroke and patients undergoing surgery for brain tumours.