Rochester General Health System
Rochester General Hospital Honored for Ninth Time as one of Nation’s 100 Top Hospitals® for Cardiovascular Care
(11/16/09)
Just nine other hospitals in U.S., and only one in entire Northeast, have been honored as much
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 — 2009 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.
This is the ninth time that Rochester General has earned the Top 100 designation, an accomplishment matched by just nine other institutions in the nation, and just one in the entire Northeast. In addition, RGH remains the only hospital in the greater Rochester region to have ever been awarded this distinction. Data related to more than 1,000 hospitals across the nation that provide cardiac care was analyzed by Thomson Reuters in determining the Top 100. The data confirms that those hospitals included in the nation’s Top 100, including Rochester General, perform significantly better than their counterparts in achieving superior outcomes for their patients. The study, in its eleventh year, found that the 100 Top Heart Hospitals on average, when compared to hospitals that did not make the Top 100, achieve:
- Lower mortality rates – ranging from 10-27% lower in four different categories
- Fewer complications - 99 percent of patients were complication-free
- A faster return to everyday life for patients - 12 percent shorter average hospital stay
- Greater cost efficiency - 12 percent lower cost per case
“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. “While Congress and the country continue to debate national health care reform, it is a source of great pride for all of us that Rochester General is increasingly being recognized locally and nationally as a leader in setting the standard for quality, efficiency and clinical innovation. This is just the latest affirmation of our unwavering commitment to provide unparalleled quality and service in an efficient manner - the cornerstones of true healthcare reform - to those who entrust their care to us. We take great pride in offering world class care to the patients and families we serve each and every day.”
“Being named to the list of the 100 top heart hospitals in the nation is a source of great pride for our entire team of physicians and staff,” said Dr. Ronald Kirshner, Chief of Cardiac Services and Cardiothoracic Surgery at RGH. “The most important thing is that we never look at this designation as a one day celebration; we view it as a 365-day commitment to continuing to improve on the quality of care we provide our patients and the wonderful outcomes we achieve.”
“Cardiovascular disease is still the number-one killer in the United States so we look for the hospitals that provide the best care,” said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs of Thomson Reuters. “These hospitals set the national standard for cardiovascular disease outcomes, process of care, efficiency, and lower costs. They deliver significant value to their communities.”
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 2007 and 2008 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 2009 100 Top Hospitals Cardiovascular study abstract is available at www.100tophospitals.com.
Media Contact:
Michael Tedesco
(585) 922-3677
michael.tedesco@rochestergeneral.org
