The Healthcare business of Thomson Reuters recently named the nation's 100 Top Hospitals® for cardiovascular care. Only 30 community hospitals across the nation were selected for the honor. In Houston, the best of the best included Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center and the hospital grouping comprised of Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute - Southwest, Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital, Memorial Hermann Southeast Hospital and Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Medical Center.
"This recognition showcases the care that our physicians and staff bring throughout Houston," said Carol Edwards, Memorial Hermann system executive for the heart and vascular service line. "By continually advancing the level of cardiovascular care at our hospitals we are able to save more patient lives-that's the bottom line."
According to Thomson Reuters, if all hospitals performed at the level of the benchmark hospitals, it would save almost 6,000 lives per year and prevent nonfatal complications in an additional 720 patients, according to Thomson Reuters. Benchmark hospitals saved an average of more than $1,500 per case.
"These hospitals provide enormous value to their communities because heart disease is still the nation's number one killer. They have set the new national standard for cardiovascular disease outcomes, process of care, efficiency, and lower costs," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs in the Healthcare business of Thomson Reuters.
The annual study - 2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success - examined the performance of 970 hospitals by analyzing clinical outcomes for patients diagnosed with heart failure and heart attacks and for those who received coronary bypass surgery and angioplasties. They scored hospitals in key performance areas: risk-adjusted medical mortality, risk-adjusted surgical mortality, risk-adjusted complications, core measures score, percentage of coronary bypass patients with internal mammary artery use, procedure volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and wage- and severity-adjusted average cost. The 2008 winners were also announced in Modern Healthcare magazine.
The study, in its tenth year, found that the 100 Top Hospitals cardiovascular award winners, as a group, performed 63 percent more bypass surgeries and 42 percent more angioplasties than peer hospitals. This may suggest that performance of bypass surgery is increasingly performed in centers of excellence.
While the average mortality rate for cardiovascular patients is very low (3.4 percent), the mortality rate for bypass surgery was 26 percent lower in the 100 Top Hospitals cardiovascular winners. The award-winning hospitals demonstrated higher performance on the evidence-based core measures published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.