11/23/2004

JEWISH HOSPITAL NAMED TOP 100 IN U.S. FOR HEART CARE

Louisville, KY – Jewish Hospital was named one of the nation’s top centers for cardiovascular services by Solucient®, a national healthcare information firm based in Evanston, Ill., that provides quality rankings for acute care hospitals based on Medicare data. The 2004 Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success award confirms that Jewish Hospital is among the hospitals performing surgery on more patients with a better success rate, and if more hospitals exhibited those same trends, more patients could survive surgery. The annual Solucient award for cardiovascular services objectively measures performance on key criteria at the nation’s top performing acute-care hospitals. Solucient scored facilities in seven key performance areas: risk-adjusted medical mortality, risk-adjusted surgical mortality, complications, percentage of Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) surgery patients with internal mammary artery use, procedure volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and wage and severity-adjusted average cost. The 2004 Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success study appears in the Oct. 25 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine. As the nation’s leading source of information products for the healthcare industry, Solucient provides tools and vital insights that healthcare managers use to improve the performance of their organizations. Solucient’s expertise and proven solutions enable providers, payers and pharmaceutical companies to drive business growth, manage costs and deliver high quality care. “This is the fourth time Jewish Hospital has been recognized, three times for cardiac services and once for orthopaedics. Consumers also have selected us for six straight years as a Consumer Choice award for quality,” said Hank Wagner, president, Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services. “Our physicians and staff have expertise in the simplest of procedures to the most complex. We serve people in all stages of cardiac care, from prevention to heart transplantation. This honor just reinforces our belief that Jewish Hospital offers the region excellence above all.” “This award is further proof that Jewish Hospital Heart and Lung Institute offers excellent care for our cardiac patients. We have more experience and expertise in caring for cardiac patients than anyone else in the area, and it shows,” said David Zechman, CEO of Jewish Hospital Heart and Lung Institute. “I am honored to work with our physicians and staff who are among the best in their field.” Among Solucient’s key findings in the 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success study are: · Although they are sicker than ever before, more coronary bypass patients across the nation are surviving surgery, and at higher than anticipated rates. The Solucient 100 Top Hospitals® Cardiovascular award winners are leading the nation in this new trend. · The results showed a significant increase in the severity of co-morbidities and complications, which translated into a higher “expected” death rate of five more patients per 1,000 by 2003. However, contrary to this expected rise in coronary bypass mortality, the study shows the reverse: a significant decrease in the actual death rate of five patients per 1,000 by 2003. · If cardiovascular services in all acute-care hospitals performed at the same level as the hospitals with the nation’s top cardiovascular services, 4,200 additional cardiovascular patients could survive each year; and an additional 1,600 patients could be complication-free. · Winning hospitals are 35 percent less likely than non-winners to have post-operative infections and 20 percent less likely than non-winners to have post-operative hemorrhage for patients undergoing CABG or percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI). · Winning hospitals annually perform twice as many bypass surgeries and PCIs, including angioplasties, as their peers. · Cardiovascular patients at winning hospitals return to everyday life faster than those at non-winning hospitals. Patients at the winning hospitals were released more than a half-day earlier than patients at peer hospitals. · Average cardiovascular-related costs for benchmark hospitals were nearly 13 percent lower than at peer hospitals. The sixth edition of the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success study analyzed acute-care hospitals nationwide using detailed empirical performance data from publicly available Medicare MedPAR data and Medicare cost reports. The measures were calculated for three classes of hospitals with the following number of winners in each (Jewish Hospital is considered a Teaching with Cardiovascular Residency Program): · Teaching with Cardiovascular Residency Programs - 30 winners · Teaching without Cardiovascular Residency Programs - 40 winners · Community - 30 winners More information on this study and other 100 Top Hospitals research is available at www.100tophospitals.com. Copies of the 100 Top Hospitals report can be purchased by calling Solucient at 1-800-568-3282 or logging on to www.100tophospitals.com. Additional information can also be found at www.jewishhospital.org. Jewish Hospital is one of the premier heart hospitals in the United States, dedicated to excellence in clinical care, research and education. Jewish Hospital has been the site of many “firsts,” including the world's first and second successful AbioCor® artificial heart implants and the world's first and nation’s second successful hand transplant. In 2001, Jewish Hospital became the first hospital in the region to earn the Magnet designation; the highest honor for nursing services, and in 2004 received the Consumer Choice Award as the most preferred hospital in Louisville for the sixth consecutive year.

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