Given the following table, assess Mercy Hospital against the benchmarks for urban teaching hospitals, and so on. Explain Mercy Hospital's strengths and weaknesses in occupancy, payer mix, service mix, and labor use. Identify two areas you would recommend for improvement and explain why these two areas should be given priority.

Operating Indicators	Mercy Hospital	Median	25th	75th
Occupancy	64.3%	55.3%	39.0%	68.4%
Discharges per bed	37.2	33.0	17.4	47.5
Adjusted ALOS	2.8	2.7	2.4	3.0
Medicare % Discharges	44.9%	40.3%	30.0%	52.9%
Medicaid % Discharges	5.2%	5.7%	1.9%	12.9%
Outpatient Revenue %	62.3%	58.4%	44.2%	71.5%
Salaries per adjusted discharge	$2,696	$2,382	$1,982	$2,866
FTEs per occupied bed	3.6	3.7	3.2	4.3
Salaries as % of total expenses	42.70%	39.8%	34.6%	44.7%
Deductible ratio	63.10%	62.7%	48.8%	72.0%