St. Joseph Hospital has been recognized by the independent HCIA-Sachs Institute with a year 2000 100 Top Hospitals award for excellence in providing cardiovascular care to patients. Previously, St. Joseph was named as a 100 Top Hospitals for orthopedic care with top honors in fracture repair.

The studies analyze government data to compare hospitals on mortality rates, complication rates, length of stay, average costs, and several other quality performance measures. The 100 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals have better outcomes in the areas of heart attack, angioplasty, and artery-related treatments and procedures. The cardiovascular study also found the top hospitals operate at nearly $700 less per case.

Since heart disease is the leading cause of death among Americans and accounts for nearly 300,000 Medicare hospitalizations each year, cardiology is one of the most commonly utilized and high profile of all hospital service lines.

“Achieving this Top 100 ranking is a testament to the high quality program we’ve worked hard to build in this community since it began it in 1994,” says Nancy Bitting, CEO, St. Joseph Hospital. There are more than 1,000 hospitals across the nation performing open-heart surgery and hundreds more with medical cardiology programs.

“It’s an honor for our entire staff to know that the level of patient care they deliver is among the best anywhere,” Bitting says. “And, it should further boost people’s confidence in the level of care we provide.”

About the 100 Top Hospitals study

A summary version of the study can be found on HCIA-Sachs’ Web site.

HCIA-Sachs, an independent health care research company, developed the 100 Top Hospitals™: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success study in 1999 to identify the nation’s top cardiology hospitals and set a standard for cardiovascular treatment throughout the country. HCIA-Sachs first launched the 100 Top Hospitals initiative in 1993 to identify the top U.S. hospitals based solely upon empirical findings from publicly available performance data.

Based on the cardiovascular study, HCIA-Sachs determined that if hospitals included in the study performed at the level of the top 100, the following would result:

• Deaths from cardiovascular surgery would be drastically reduced. Mortality rates would decrease nearly 15 percent for both angioplasty and bypass procedures, while post-operative mortality rates would drop 18 percent.
• The mortality rate for heart attack patients not requiring invasive procedures would drop by 9 percent for heart attack patients.
• Patient infections after surgery would plummet 26 percent, while post-procedural hemorrhage would fall 21 percent.
• Hospitals could cut cardiology costs by $250 million – an average of $415,000 per hospital.
• Lengths of stay for cardiac patients would fall by an average of half a day.

The study is based on 887,172 Medicare cardiovascular cases in 1997 and 1998 (the most recent two years of data available).

The study includes hospitals that treat the full spectrum of cardiology patients, from those who do not require invasive procedures to those needing open-heart surgery. The study focuses on acute myocardial infarction (AMI), percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), and coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) procedures.