Death Rates Among Heart Attack Patients Are Lower At Higher Ranked Hospitals

Individuals admitted for heart attack to a hospital ranked as one of “America’s Best” by U.S. News & World Report are less likely to die within 30 days than those admitted to a non-ranked hospital, according to a report in the July 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Surprising? Nah! That is what I would expect a study to find. The door to treatment time will be faster at higher ranked hospitals as well as the training and treatment practices of the clinicians that practice there.

There could be many reasons for these findings. And rankings don’t always pan out. These rankings are often determined by word of mouth and fellow peers citations of facilities. I think that in some cases, the numbers do not correlate and rankings should be taken with a grain of salt.

However, that does not mean that assessing hospital quality has no role in medicine, they write. Hospitals ranked poorly should take action, and those ranked highly should not boast or become complacent. “They need to understand the potential inconsistency and fallibility of quality-ranking systems. And they need to realize that regardless of their true rank, their goal should not be to merely beat their peers in the ratings but to strive for optimum performance. In this type of quality competition, the real winners are the patients,” Drs. O’Brien and Peterson conclude.

It is always important to know what the facilities surrounding you offer and what they excel at. I am fortunate and live right in the hub of higher learning trauma and university centers in and around Baltimore, Maryland. But I also know what each has to offer and which suits what need the best. You can never be too prepared!

via Science Daily