Hospital Care Varies Across Nation
No two hospitals are the same – in architecture, in decor, or even in ability to treat various diseases and illnesses. But one would assume that acute care of heart attacks and heart failure would be the same across the board.
Not so, according to a new study recently published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
In this study, researchers reviewed three years of experience (July 2005 to June 2008) of Medicare fee-for-service patients with heart failure and heart attack at almost 5,000 hospitals across the nation. Examining the records of nearly 600,000 heart attack admissions and more than 1 million heart failure admissions, they calculated the 30-day death and readmission rates and found:
- The average 30-day death rate for heart attack was 16.6 percent and the average rate of heart attack readmission was 19.9 percent.
- The average 30-day death rate for heart failure was 11.1 percent and 24.4 percent for readmission.
- Heart failure death rate ranged from 6.6 percent to 19.8 percent.
- Readmission for heart attack ranged from 15.3 percent to 29.4 percent.
- Readmission for heart failure ranged from 15.9 percent to 34.4 percent.
What’s it all mean?
Well, according to Harlan M. Krumholz, M.D., the study’s lead author and professor of medicine and outcomes researcher at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn, the results “suggests that patients’ outcomes are dependent, at least in part, on the hospital that provides their care.”
The US Dept of Health and Services has correlated the data from this study and put it online at Hospital Compare so that anyone can see how different hospitals compare to each other on everything from blood clot treatments to nursing care. The site also offers hospitals the opportunity to see how they measure up to their competitors.
Of course all hospitals are different. Its not so much the hospital as the people working at them. Some people just care more for others.