Local Hospitals ‘Average’ in Treating Heart Problems, Government Suggests
By Gabe Semenza, Victoria Advocate, Texas
Jun. 26–Citizens Medical Center and DeTar Healthcare System perform at the national average in the treatment of patients suffering from heart attacks or heart failure, a federal rating system released late last week suggests. But that shouldn’t necessarily be taken at face value, one Victoria hospital CEO said.
A list of hospitals that perform better and worse than the national average — based on, among things, mortality rates — was e-mailed to the Advocate from Don McLeod, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Neither of Victoria’s two hospitals is on the list.
McLeod said that means Citizens and DeTar fall into the national average for these performance measures.
Nationally, the 30-day death rate average from heart attacks is about 18 percent. For heart failure, the average is about 11 percent.
Lana Webel, DeTar’s director of quality outcomes, said she knew her hospital’s mortality rates. Now, it’s just more public.
“I know we’re doing fairly well,” Webel said Monday, adding that this public report card is good because it helps patients to better shop for a hospital. But David Brown, Citizens’ CEO, noted that of the nation’s 4,500 hospitals only 97 — or about 2 percent — performed either better, or worse, than the national average.
The other 98 percent of U.S. hospitals — small and large, experienced and new — are lumped together and rated as performing at the national average.
“That’s data that you can almost ignore,” Brown said. “There is a lot of other data patients want to include in their assessment.”
Asked whether he believes the data will help patients to shop for better care, Brown said, “Right now, the data’s not doing much for that. One day the data will be improved.”
Three of four Texas hospitals that made the list did so for performing worse than the national average in these measures, including Christus St. Michael Health System in Texarkana, Baylor All Saints Medical Center at Fort Worth, and Hendrick Medical Center in Abilene.
Houston’s Memorial Hermann Healthcare System is the only Texas hospital to have performed better than the national average in these measures, according to the report.
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