National study ranks St. Elizabeth’s among the best for quality of Cardiac Care and Coronary Intervention Outcomes

St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, a part of the Steward Health Care System and teaching affiliate of Tufts University School of Medicine, recently received several quality awards from Healthgrades including America's 100 Best Cardiac Care, America's 100 Best Coronary Intervention, the Cardiac Care Excellence Award and the Coronary Intervention Excellence Award. Healthgrades, the leading online resource that helps consumers search, compare and connect with physicians and hospitals. The report, American Hospital Quality Outcomes 2014: Healthgrades Report to the Nation, evaluates hospital performance at over 4,500 hospitals nationwide for 31 of the most common inpatient procedures and conditions from 2010 through 2012.

“St. Elizabeth’s is proud to earn these awards because they recognize the exceptional cardiac care we provide to our patients,” said Kevin Hannifan, president, St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center. “Heart disease impacts so many people and families in our community. Our physicians, nurses, allied health professionals and support staff throughout the hospital, are focused on ensuring that we are creating an environment in which our highly-trained medical professionals can deliver quality of care which leads to the best possible patient outcomes.”

The 2014 Healthgrades report highlights the disparity in hospital performance for specific conditions and procedures and the impact that this variation may have on health outcomes. For example, from 2010-2012, if all hospitals as a group, performed similarly to hospitals receiving 5-stars as a group, on average 234,252 lives could potentially have been saved and 157,418 complications could potentially have been avoided.  A 5-star rating indicates that St. Elizabeth’s clinical outcomes are better than expected when treating the condition or conducting the procedure being evaluated.

St. Elizabeth’s not only performs at a 5 star level – it outperforms other hospitals in the nation in this condition, and as a result has been recognized with the 2014 Healthgrades America’s 100 Best Cardiac Care.

“As American policy-makers focus more intently on ways to lower healthcare costs and improve quality, patients are being asked to assume more responsibility for their healthcare decisions – from selection of their health plan to the associated network of physicians and hospitals,” said Evan Marks, EVP, Strategy and Informatics, Healthgrades.  “Since all hospitals do not perform equally in all procedures, patients can have confidence that by selecting physicians associated with a hospital with a 5-star rating, patients are more likely to experience better health outcomes, and reduce costs.”

In the past several years, St. Elizabeth’s has made significant investments in its cardiac services including:

• Opening a new Emergency Room in 2009
• Renovating a Peripheral Vascular lab
• Renovating Cardiac Catheterization lab
• Investing in the Corindus Vascular Robot and the da Vinci surgical robot for cardiac procedures
• Opening a new 23-bed intensive care unit

St. Elizabeth’s was recently awarded top honors in Massachusetts for interventional cardiology from CareChex, a division of Comparion, and received the Blue Cross Blue Shield Distinction for Cardiac Care.

 For the Healthgrades 2014 analysis, approximately 40 million Medicare-patient records were evaluated for nearly 4,500 short-term acute care hospitals nationwide, assessing hospital performance relative to each of 31 common conditions and procedures. Healthgrades awards hospitals quality achievements for cohort-specific performance, specialty area performance, and overall clinical quality. Individual procedure or condition cohorts are designated as 5 star (statistically better than expected), 3 star (statistically as expected) and 1 star (statistically worse than expected) categories. More information on the American Hospital Quality Outcomes 2014: Healthgrades Report to the Nation, including the complete methodology, can be found at www.healthgrades.com/quality.

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 About St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center
St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center is a major academic medical center affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine.  Areas of medical excellence include cardiology, neurosciences, general and robotic surgery, bariatric surgery, women’s health, high-risk obstetrics, bone and joint health, hematology/oncology, pulmonary medicine and emergency medicine.  St. Elizabeth’s is a member of Steward Health Care, which is the second largest health care system in New England.  Visit St. Elizabeth’s online at Steward.org/St-Elizabeths.