Thomson Reuters picks 100 top CV hospitals

The healthcare business of Thomson Reuters has released its annual study, identifying 100 U.S. hospitals that are setting the benchmarks for cardiovascular (CV) care.

Thomson said that the study examined 970 hospitals by analyzing clinical outcomes for patients diagnosed with heart failure and heart attacks, as well as for those who received coronary bypass surgery and angioplasties.

The study, in its tenth year, found that the hospital cardiovascular award winners, as a group, performed 63 percent more bypass surgeries and 42 percent more angioplasties than peer hospitals, which may “suggest that performance of bypass surgery is increasingly performed in centers of excellence,” Thomson noted.

While the average mortality rate for cardiovascular patients is 3.4 percent, the mortality rate for bypass surgery was 26 percent lower in the hospital CV winners. The award-winning hospitals demonstrated higher performance on the evidence-based core measures published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and cost $1,542 less per case, on average.

Hospitals were classified into three comparison groups: teaching hospitals with CV residency programs (30 winners); teaching hospitals without CV residency programs (40 winners); and community hospitals (30 winners).

Among the top CV hospitals within each group are:

Teaching hospitals with cardiovascular residency programs:
  • Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix;
  • Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Conn.;
  • Cleveland Clinic Florida in Weston, Fla.;
  • Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill.; and
  • St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital in Indianapolis, Ind.;
Teaching hospitals without cardiovascular residency programs:
  • Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Fla.;
  • St. Vincent's Medical Center in Jacksonville, Fla.;
  • Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Fla.;
  • St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho; and
  • St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho;
Community hospitals:
  • Thomas Hospital in Fairhope, Ala.;
  • Arizona Heart Hospital in Phoenix;
  • Banner Heart Hospital in Mesa, Ariz.;
  • French Hospital Medical Center in San Luis Obispo, Calif.; and
  • Venice Regional Medical Center in Venice, Fla.
“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.

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