Rochester General Health System
Rochester General Hospital Named to Thomson Reuters List of Nation's 100 Top Hospitals for Cardiovascular Care
(11/17/08)
* Marks eighth time Rochester General has been named among nation's best
Rochester General Hospital has once again been included among the Top 100 U.S. hospitals that are setting the nation's benchmarks for cardiovascular care. The Healthcare business of Thomson Reuters today released its annual study 2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success which analyzes clinical outcomes for patients diagnosed with heart failure and heart attacks and for those who received coronary bypass surgery and angioplasties. The study once again listed Rochester General as one of the nationﾒs 100 Top Cardiac Hospitals, joining an elite group that includes such nationally recognized institutions as the Cleveland Clinic, Yale-New Haven Medical Center, and the Mayo Clinic.
This is the eighth time that Rochester General has earned the Top 100 designation, an accomplishment matched by just 16 other institutions in the nation. In addition, RGH remains the only hospital in the greater Rochester region to have ever been awarded this distinction. Data related to nearly 1,000 hospitals across the country was analyzed by Thomson Reuters in determining the Top 100.
"We are extremely proud to have once again been named one of the nation's Top 100 Cardiac hospitals," said Mark C. Clement, president of Rochester General and CEO of Rochester General Health System. "Providing the highest quality care and achieving excellent outcomes for our patients is central to our mission. To achieve such sustained excellence is a tribute to our very talented and dedicated multidisciplinary team. We take great pride in offering world class care to the patients and families we serve each and every day."
"These hospitals provide enormous value to their communities because heart disease is still the nation's number one killer," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs in the Healthcare business of Thomson Reuters. "They have set the new national standard for cardiovascular disease outcomes, process of care, efficiency, and lower costs."
The study, in its tenth year, found that the 100 Top Hospitals cardiovascular award winners, as a group:
- Performed 63 percent more bypass surgeries and 42 percent more angioplasties than peer hospitals
- Achieved a mortality rate for cardiac bypass surgery that was 26 percent lower than hospitals not included in the 100 Top Hospitals cardiovascular winners
- Demonstrated higher performance on the evidence-based core measures published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and cost $1,542 less per case, on average
"This Top 100 Cardiac designation reflects our relentless pursuit of excellence and our commitment to the highest possible quality of care," said Ronald L. Kirshner, chief of Cardiac Services and Cardiothoracic Surgery at Rochester General. "In this era of consumerism, it is vitally important that patients be knowledgeable about quality outcomes. This designation is based solely on outcomes data, so patients can be confident in the care that they receive at Rochester General Hospital."
The 100 Top Hospitals study focused on short-term, acute care hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of cardiac patients. Thomson Reuters researchers utilized objective, third-party data sources in reviewing 2006 and 2007 Medicare reports. They scored hospitals in eight key performance areas: risk-adjusted medical mortality, risk-adjusted surgical mortality, risk-adjusted complications, core measures score, percentage of coronary bypass patients with internal mammary artery use, procedure volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and wage- and severity-adjusted average cost.
For full details, a download of the 2008 100 Top Hospitals Cardiovascular study abstract is available at http://www.100tophospitals.com.
