Heart attack patients treated at for-profit hospitals more likely to be readmitted

For-profit hospitals in the United States may be starting to fall behind their nonprofit counterparts when it comes to heart attack outcomes, according to new data published in JACC: Advances.[1] Readmission rates—a recognized sign of care quality—seem to be falling at nonprofit hospitals while they remain mostly unchanged at for-profit facilities.

The study’s authors reviewed data from more than 4.6 million acute myocardial infarction (AMI) hospital admissions from 2013 to 2022. All data came from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Nationwide Readmissions Database. ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and non-STEMI diagnosis codes were used to identify AMI hospitalizations. 

Overall, the AMI readmission rate at for-profit hospitals remained relatively stable from 2013 (13%) to 2022 (12.7%). At nonprofit hospitals, on the other hand, the AMI readmission rate dropped from 11.5% in 2013 to 10.5% in 2022. This same pattern was true when only looking at patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures. For patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), meanwhile, both for-profit and nonprofit hospitals saw readmission rates decline over the course of the study.

The authors also found that for-profit and nonprofit hospitals were linked to comparable in-hospital mortality rates. One area where for-profit hospitals bested nonprofit hospitals was reducing cardiac complications. Respiratory and renal complications, on the other hand, were more common at for-profit hospitals than they were at nonprofit hospitals.