Patients have on average a 71 percent lower chance of dying at the nation’s top-rated hospitals compared with the lowest-rated hospitals across 18 procedures and conditions analyzed in The Tenth Annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study, issued Oct. 15 by HealthGrades. The study, which documents a wide variation in the quality of care between the highest-performing hospitals and all others, also found that if all hospitals performed at the level of highest-performing hospitals, 266,604 Medicare lives could potentially have been saved over the three years studied.
The HealthGrades study of patient outcomes at the nation’s approximately 5,000 hospitals covers more than 41 million Medicare hospitalization records from 2004 to 2006. According to the report, mortality rates at U.S. hospitals have improved 11.8 percent from 2004 to 2006, with the nation’s top-rated hospitals improving at a faster rate (12.8 percent) than the lowest-rated hospitals (11.4 percent). Of the 18 procedures and conditions studied, those that saw the most improvement in mortality rates were pancreatitis (19.2 percent), pulmonary embolism (17.4 percent), and diabetic acidosis and coma (16.6 percent). Those with the least improvement were resection/replacement of the abdominal aorta (0.4 percent), coronary interventional procedures such as angioplasties and stents (0.8 percent), and treatment of heart attack (8.9 percent). Download the report.
