Financial statement analysis is important to boards, managers, payers, lenders, and others who make judgments about the fi nancial health of organizations  One widely accepted method of assessing financial statements is ratio analys is, which uses data from the balance sheet and income statement to produce values that have easily interpreted fina ncial meaning. Most hospitals, health systems and other healthcare or ganizations routinely ev aluate their financial condition by calculating various ra tios and comparing the values to those for previous periods, looking for differences that could indicate a meaningful change in financial condition. Many healthcare organizations also compare their own ratio values to those for similar organizations, looking for differences that could indicate weaknesses or opportunities for improvement.Comparisons with other organizations are only as useful as the degree to which the organizations are similar. Contrasting the fina ncial position of a Critical Access Hospital (CAH) with that of a major teaching hos pital is not informative because the two hospitals have vastly different missions. Therefore, one key