Government Ranks Nation's Hospital Outcomes: Heart Discrepancies Noted
Data comparing the nation's hospitals on the basis of health outcomes has been released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for the first time in twenty years. According to the data, while nearly all of the 4,500 U.S. hospitals scored somewhere near the national average in terms of mortality rates, there were significant discrepancies in their relative rates of success at treating heart attacks and heart failure. For heart failure, 38 hospitals scored well above the national average, and 35 scored worse. Heart attack statistics show that 17 hospitals perform better than most, and 7 perform significantly worse.
HHS has published the data in an effort to improve patients' ability to make educated health care decisions, and to improve the quality of the nation's health care by compelling individual hospitals to compete publicly on the basis of quality outcomes. Comparison data had been released by the government many years ago, but the results were widely criticized as inaccurate, skewed in favor of those hospitals that didn't perform inherently risky procedures and that served populations with relatively few unhealthy or indigent patients. Newer, more sophisticated methods of data collection and analysis have produced this new national scorecard. Both the government and the American Hospital Association have spoken in support of the current research methods and the findings.
To compare hospitals based on this new outcomes data, visit the HHS Hospital Comparison Website.
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