Study: Quality Heart Care Widely Available Outside 'America's Best Hospitals'

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Charlene D. Hill
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E-mail: chill@jcaho.org

OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill. – August 18, 2006 - A new study from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations finds that hospitals ranked as the “best” for heart care by U.S. News & World Report are, in fact, among hundreds of hospitals across the country where patients can receive care that measures up to or exceeds the care provided in those facilities, as determined by measuring performance for specific evidence-based care processes.

The study is notable because few comparisons of this type have been done, despite the increasing public availability of performance measurement data to both consumers and health care professionals.  Millions of readers turn to the U.S. News & World Report “America’s Best Hospitals” issue when it hits newsstands and the Internet each year, but there are few reference points for validating these rankings.

“The U.S. News & World Report ranking of hospitals uses a number of quality-related  criteria, and most would agree that those institutions provide high quality care,” says one of the researchers, Jerod M. Loeb, Ph.D., executive vice president, Division of Research, Joint Commission.  “However, the fact that many lesser known hospitals are also providing excellent cardiovascular care, as demonstrated in this study, is good news for many Americans who may not have access to those highly rated institutions.”

The study compared the performance of 774 hospitals, 41 of which were listed among U.S. News & World Report’s 50 best heart and heart surgery hospitals.  The hospitals were compared against each other using 10 measures that are based on clinical treatment guidelines from the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and American Heart Association (AHA).  This includes proven practices such as giving patients aspirin within 24 hours of arrival at the hospital, prescribing aspirin at discharge, and providing smoking cessation counseling.

The Joint Commission researchers found that 13 hospitals not in the magazine’s list of top performers did better in adhering to the treatment guidelines than any of the top 41 identified by U.S. News & World Report.  Furthermore, when all 774 hospitals included in the study were ranked based upon their adherence to specific evidence-based care practices, 313 non-ranked hospitals did as well as the top half of hospitals ranked by the magazine.  “Evaluating hospital quality is a complex task, and until recently, people seeking heart care, for themselves or family members, did not have access to the kind of data used in this study,” adds Dr. Loeb.  “Fortunately, that has changed, for it is now possible for health care professionals and the general public to compare hospitals using measures that relate directly to the quality of care being provided.”

All of the hospitals studied were accredited by the Joint Commission and submitted data on heart attack and heart failure management practices to the Joint Commission.  This information is available to the public through the Joint Commission’s Quality Check website, www.qualitycheck.org.

Joint Commission Article