Hospital Care Quality Differs Markedly by State, Says Annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study; Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, Colorado, Pennsylvania Rank Among Best.To download high-resolution, print-ready JPEG JPEG in full Joint Photographic Experts Group Standard computer file format for storing graphic images in a compressed form for general use. JPEG images are compressed using a mathematical algorithm. images, click on the thumbnail image above. WARNING: these images are very large (800K+) Click here for caption Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers NOTE TO MEDIA: Multimedia assets available A photo is available at URL URL in full Uniform Resource Locator Address of a resource on the Internet. The resource can be any type of file stored on a server, such as a Web page, a text file, a graphics file, or an application program. : http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/photo.cgi?pw.092203/bb9 LAKEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 22, 2003 Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma Rank Among Worst; Study's Quality Ratings of 5,000 Hospitals Posted on HealthGrades.com The quality of care at the nation's hospitals varies substantially from state to state, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the sixth annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study, released today. Results of the study, which rates each of the nation's nearly 5,000 hospitals in 26 procedures and diagnoses, were made available today on HealthGrades.com to assist individuals in finding high-quality hospitals in their local areas. The HealthGrades study, which ranked the states in hospital quality, found that better-performing hospitals were concentrated in northern and less populous states, while worse-performing hospitals were concentrated in southern states Southern States U.S. Confederacy government of 11 Southern states that left the Union in 1860. [Am. Hist.: EB, III: 73] Dixie popular name for Southern states in U.S. and for song. [Am. Hist. . Many of the states that exhibited the highest hospital quality, such as Florida, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, ranked among the best consistently across the procedures and diagnoses studied. Similarly, many of the worst states, such as Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Mississippi, were ranked among the worst consistently across all procedures and diagnoses studied. While there are five-star hospitals in these states, patients, on average, get better care in the higher-ranking states. "On average, you have a 54.9% increased chance of dying if you have an angioplasty angioplasty (ăn`jēōplăs'tē), any surgical repair of a blood vessel, especially balloon angioplasty or percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty, a treatment of coronary artery disease. or other percutaneous coronary intervention Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), commonly known as coronary angioplasty or simply angioplasty, is a therapeutic procedure to treat the stenotic (narrowed) coronary arteries of the heart found in coronary heart disease. in Texas rather than New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of ," said Samantha Collier, MD, HealthGrades' vice president of medical affairs. "In Mississippi, your chance of dying from a heart attack is 49.4% higher, on average, than if you were treated in Colorado. The quality chasm at American hospitals is real, and it is very alarming and concerning - despite evidence of process improvements." Ranking of States by 5 Key Quality Outcome Measurements HEALTHGRADES SIXTH ANNUAL HOSPITAL RATINGS RELEASE PAGE 4
Rank State
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1 ND
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2 FL
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3 OH
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4 MI
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5 MD
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6 CO
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7 PA
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8 CT
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9 UT
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10 SD
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11 VA
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12 MN
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13 AZ
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14 MT
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15 NJ
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16 ME
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17 IL
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18 RI
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19 WA
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20 IN
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21 OR
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22 DC
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23 NH
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24 ID
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25 CA
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26 MA
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27 MO
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28 LA
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29 NC
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30 TX
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31 NM
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32 NE
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33 NY
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34 KY
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35 DE
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36 NV
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37 GA
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38 WI
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39 AK
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40 IA
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41 WV
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42 SC
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43 WY
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44 HI
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45 OK
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46 VT
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47 KS
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48 TN
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49 AR
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50 AL
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51 MS
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To compile the state rankings, 5 procedures and diagnoses - of the 26 HealthGrades rates at hospitals nationwide - were chosen to represent various aspects of quality at the state level: Coronary Artery Bypass Graft surgery Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery Definition Coronary artery bypass graft surgery is a surgical procedure in which one or more blocked coronary arteries are bypassed by a blood vessel graft to restore normal blood flow to the heart. (CABG CABG coronary artery bypass graft. CABG abbr. coronary artery bypass graft CABG Coronary artery bypass graft, see there ), Percutaneous Coronary Interventions (PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). ), Acute Myocardial Infarction acute myocardial infarction (  ·kyōōtˑ mī·ō·karˑ·dē· (AMI), Congestive Heart Failure congestive heart failure, inability of the heart to expel sufficient blood to keep pace with the metabolic demands of the body. In the healthy individual the heart can tolerate large increases of workload for a considerable length of time. (CHF CHFIn currencies, this is the abbreviation for the Swiss Franc. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. ) and Community Acquired Pneumonia (CAP). The greatest difference in outcomes at the state level was found with PCIs, which includes angioplasty, stent, and atherectomy. More than 500,000 PCIs are performed each year, according to the American Heart Association American Heart Association (AHA), n.pr a national voluntary health agency that has the goal of increasing public and medical awareness of cardiovascular diseases and stroke, and thereby reducing the number of associated deaths and disabilities. . For these procedures, New York was the best performing state and Alaska was the worst. Along with Alaska, states such as Texas and Tennessee had an above-average level of PCI mortality, which resulted in hundreds of unnecessary deaths between 2000 and 2002. Hospitals in states such as New York, New Jersey and Florida had lower-than-expected mortality rates, which resulted in hundreds of lives being saved in those states during the same period. State-Level Hospital Quality for Percutaneous Coronary Interventions (PCI), Including Angioplasty, Stent and Atherectomy
number of extra
% higher risk of % higher risk of deaths (lives
dying compared to dying (surviving) saved) compared to
Best Ranked State compared to US US average (2000-
Rank State (NY) average 2002)
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1 NY (39.97) (287)
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2 ME 13.12 (26.86) (27)
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3 ID 17.70 (22.28) (14)
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4 NJ 18.07 (21.91) (102)
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5 WI 24.99 (14.99) (60)
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6 FL 28.02 (11.95) (173)
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7 PA 30.59 (9.38) (92)
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8 OH 31.27 (8.71) (77)
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9 GA 31.41 (8.56) (32)
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10 MI 31.93 (8.04) (70)
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11 MT 24.56 (15.42) (15)
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12 ND 31.95 (8.02) (7)
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13 NH 32.85 (7.13) (6)
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14 RI 32.96 (7.01) (3)
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15 CO 33.33 (6.65) (13)
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16 SD 35.24 (4.74) (3)
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17 CA 35.77 (4.20) (48)
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18 CT 35.96 (4.02) (9)
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19 MN 36.10 (3.88) (14)
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20 NM 36.57 (3.41) (3)
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21 IN 36.84 (3.14) (19)
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22 VA 37.78 (2.20) (8)
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23 IL 38.71 (1.26) (10)
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24 OR 39.69 (0.29) 0
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25 MA 40.75 0.77 3
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26 HI 43.11 3.13 1
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27 MD 43.53 3.55 11
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28 NC 44.09 4.11 24
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29 UT 45.06 5.08 7
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30 SC 45.96 5.98 16
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31 DC 46.11 6.14 7
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32 VT 46.38 6.40 2
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33 LA 47.41 7.43 26
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34 AZ 48.03 8.05 24
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35 NE 51.12 11.14 16
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36 WV 51.95 11.97 16
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37 DE 55.17 15.19 10
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38 MO 49.50 9.53 60
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39 WA 51.44 11.47 32
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40 KY 53.26 13.28 41
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41 TX 54.91 14.93 193
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42 IA 57.43 17.45 54
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43 NV 58.08 18.11 20
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44 OK 60.12 20.15 55
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45 AL 60.30 20.33 84
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46 TN 64.78 24.81 120
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47 AR 65.24 25.26 54
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48 WY 82.48 42.51 12
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49 KS 83.66 43.68 81
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50 MS 87.05 47.07 75
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51 AK 119.56 79.59 9
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(a) Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (pwār`tō rē`kō), island (2005 est. pop. 3,917,000), 3,508 sq mi (9,086 sq km), West Indies, c.1,000 mi (1,610 km) SE of Miami, Fla. , Guam, Virgin Islands were analyzed, but results were not included in this table. Attention to improvement at the state level does seem to be having an impact, the study found. States with well-known and publicized pub·li·cize tr.v. pub·li·cized, pub·li·ciz·ing, pub·li·ciz·es To give publicity to. Adj. 1. publicized - made known; especially made widely known publicised Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services' Quality Improvement Organization efforts, or with hospital- and physician-specific public profiling of CABG outcomes, are ranked among the best states for performance of CABG surgery. These include New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Massachusetts and Virginia. The study also found that for all cardiac procedures and diagnoses, there was a positive trend between performance and hospital volume, a finding consistent with previous studies. Hospital Ratings Methodology The quality ratings of 26 procedures and diagnoses at nearly 5,000 hospitals just released by HealthGrades are available at HealthGrades.com. They cover cardiac care, orthopedics, vascular surgery Vascular surgery is a subspecialty of general surgery in which diseases of the vascular system, or arteries and veins, are managed, largely via surgical intervention. The vascular surgeon is trained in the diagnosis and management of diseases affecting all parts of the vascular , neurosciences and pulmonary medicine. New categories added this year include atrial fibrillation atrial fibrillation Irregular rhythm (arrhythmia) of contraction of the atria (upper heart chambers). The most common major arrhythmia, it may result as a consequence of increased fibrous tissue in the aging heart, of heart disease, or in association with severe infection. , gastrointestinal bleed, sepsis Sepsis Definition Sepsis refers to a bacterial infection in the bloodstream or body tissues. This is a very broad term covering the presence of many types of microscopic disease-causing organisms. , prostatectomy Prostatectomy Definition Prostatectomy refers to the surgical removal of part of the prostate gland (transurethral resection, a procedure performed to relieve urinary symptoms caused by benign enlargement), or all of the prostate (radical prostatectomy, , cholecystectomy Cholecystectomy Definition A cholecystectomy is the surgical removal of the gallbladder. The two basic types of this procedure are open cholecystectomy and the laparoscopic approach. and bowel obstruction Bowel obstruction A blockage in the intestine which prevents the normal flow of waste down the length of the intestine. Mentioned in: Anal Atresia, Diverticulosis and Diverticulitis bowel obstruction . A five-star rating in a given category reflects performance statistically better than expected, a three-star rating reflects care at an expected or average level, while a one-star rating reflects care significantly worse than expected. HealthGrades updates the hospital ratings annually and analyzes the most recent three-year period for which national data of this type is available. This currently includes the years 2000-2002. HealthGrades' ratings are compiled using advanced statistical techniques and raw data taken from Medicare files licensed from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Medicare and Medicaid U.S. government programs in effect since 1966. Medicare covers most people 65 or older and those with long-term disabilities. Part A, a hospital insurance plan, also pays for home health visits and hospice care. Services (CMS (1) See content management system and color management system. (2) (Conversational Monitor System) Software that provides interactive communications for IBM's VM operating system. ). HealthGrades risk-adjusts the hospital data, taking into account patient characteristics such as age, gender and pre-existing medical conditions See carpal tunnel syndrome, computer vision syndrome, dry eyes and deep vein thrombosis. of patients treated at different hospitals, in order to make accurate and fair comparisons. HealthGrades compares the actual and the predicted mortality or complication rates for specific procedures and diagnoses to assign a one-, three-, or five-star rating. The full methodology is available at www.healthgrades.com. About HealthGrades Health Grades, Inc. (OTCBB OTCBB See OTC Bulletin Board (OTCBB). : HGRD) is the leading independent healthcare quality company, providing ratings, information and advisory services advisory services advisory services provided to the public, in their capacity as owners and managers of animals, are an important part of veterinary science. They may be provided by government bureaux, by commercial companies who deal in pharmaceuticals or animals or animal to healthcare providers, employers, health plans and insurance companies. HealthGrades also provides consumers access to information about health care providers and practitioners through its Web site. At http://www.healthgrades.com, consumers access profiles of more than 620,000 physicians, 5,000 hospitals, 16,000 nursing homes, 10,000 mammography mammography, diagnostic procedure that uses low-dose X rays to detect abnormalities in the breasts. The early diagnosis of breast cancer made possible by the routine use of mammography for screening women increases a woman's treatment alternatives and improves her clinics, 300 fertility clinics Fertility clinics are staffed medical clinics that assist couples, and sometimes individuals, who want to become parents but for medical reasons have been unable to achieve this goal via the natural course. , 60,000 chiropractors, 6,000 home health agencies, 75 birth centers and 3,000 hospice care facilities. HealthGrades is also working closely with the Leapfrog Group to disseminate information on hospital patient safety activities to consumers, payers and employers. Editor's Note Editor's Note (foaled in 1993 in Kentucky) is an American thoroughbred Stallion racehorse. He was sired by 1992 U.S. Champion 2 YO Colt Forty Niner, who in turn was a son of Champion sire Mr. Prospector and out of the mare, Beware Of The Cat. Trained by D. : The full HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study can be found at http://www.healthgrades.com. Note: A photo is available at URL: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/photo.cgi?pw.092203/bb9 |
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