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UW Hospital Again Named Among Solucient's Top 100 Cardiovascular Hospitals

human heartMADISON - Once is good. Twice is nice. Three times? That's what you'd officially call a trend.
 
For the third time, UW Hospital and Clinics has been named one of the nation's 100 top cardiovascular hospitals in the eighth annual list compiled by Evanston, Ill.-based Solucient®.
 
The annual Solucient award for cardiovascular services objectively measures performance on key criteria at the nation's top performing acute-care hospitals.
 
UW Hospital and Clinics is one of five Wisconsin hospitals included on the list and the only one in the comparison group of top hospitals with cardiovascular residency programs.
 
"We've continued to build on our achievements of the past two years," says Matthew Wolff, MD, head of cardiovascular medicine at UW Hospital and Clinics. "We've been very deliberate on our patient-care initiatives, and that's making a difference - not just to us, but more important, to our patients."
 
The 2006 Solucient 100 Top Hospitals: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success study appears in the Nov. 6 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.
 
Among the key findings in this year's benchmark:
  • If peer hospitals (non-winners) provided the same quality of cardiovascular care as the 100 Top Hospitals facilities, survival rates could increase by more than 8,000 patients each year. Complications of care could also decrease in peer hospitals. Approximately 575 additional patients could be complication-free.
     
  • The average 100 Top Hospitals Cardiovascular winner meets the recommended core measures standards for 95 percent of its heart attack (acute myocardial infarction or AMI) patients, compared with 93 percent at the average peer, or non-winning, hospital. Similar differences were seen for congestive heart failure (CHF) patients.

    Core measures - a set of widely accepted minimum standards of care for all patients, based on scientific evidence - are used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and approved by the National Quality Forum.
     
  • Both medical and surgical cardiovascular patients experience markedly higher survival rates at winning hospitals. For example, winning hospitals had 21 percent fewer deaths than expected for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) patients while peer hospitals had only 1 percent fewer deaths than expected.
     
  • Winning hospitals performed up to 80 percent more percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) such as stents or balloons to open clogged arteries than their peers, and about 50 percent more bypass procedures. Previous research has shown that procedure volume associated with better outcomes for cardiovascular patients.
     
  • Benchmark hospitals are proving more efficient in treating cardiovascular patients. The average 100 Top Hospitals Cardiovascular winner discharges patients half a day earlier and at an average cost that is about 13 percent less than its peers.

Solucient® scored facilities in eight key performance areas: risk-adjusted medical mortality, risk-adjusted surgical mortality, risk-adjusted complications, core measures score, percentage of bypass patients with internal mammary artery use, procedure volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and wage- and severity-adjusted average cost.

 

The measures were calculated for three classes of hospitals with the following number of winners in each:

  • Teaching with cardiovascular residency programs, 30 winners
  • Teaching without cardiovascular residency programs, 40 winners
  • Community, 30 winners

More information on this study and other 100 Top Hospitals research is available at www.100tophospitals.com.


Date Published: 07/03/2007


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