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2010

Centra Health Named One of Nation's Top Heart Hospitals By Solucient

Centra Health's Stroobants Heart Center at Lynchburg General Hospital was named this week as one of the nation's 100 Top cardiovascular hospitals by Evanston, Illinois-based Solucient.

Solucient objectively measures performance on key criteria to develop its list of top performing heart hospitals. This is the second time Centra Health has been recognized as a 100 Top heart hospital. Centra Health also is rated one of the nation's 100 Top orthopedic hospitals by Solucient.

"We have an outstanding heart team with a lot of members, and it's great to see our teamwork recognized again," said George Dawson, Centra Health president and CEO. "This top 100 citation comes on the heels of our recent recognition for speedy angioplasty and both honors remind people throughout central and southside Virginia what a great resource the Stroobants Heart Center is."

Dawson referred to a study recently released by the National Registry for Myocardial Infarction, which rated Centra Health among the top 2 percent of hospitals in the country for its speed in getting heart attack patients from the emergency department to the cath lab and reopening their blocked blood vessels.

Among Solucient's key findings:

Winning or "benchmark" heart hospitals named to the 100 Top hospitals list provided coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) patients with internal mammary artery grafts at a rate nearly four percentage points higher than "non-winning" hospitals (87.4 percent versus 83.6 percent). The IMA heart bypass technique, which has been recognized in medical studies for significantly improving survival rates and lowering complications, requires surgeons to create detours around blockages in coronary arteries by using internal mammary arteries located under the chest wall, instead of more commonly used leg veins.
If all acute care heart hospitals performed at the same level as the nation's top heart hospitals, survival rates for cardiovascular patients could increase by 4,000 patients each year and an additional 1,400 patients could be complication-free.
Top hospitals have almost 19 percent lower mortality rates for CABG or coronary balloon angioplasty surgery than peer hospitals.
Cardiovascular patients at winning hospitals return to everyday life faster than those at non-winning hospitals. Patients at the top heart hospitals were released a half-day earlier than patients at peer hospitals.
Average cardiovascular-related costs for benchmark hospitals were nearly 11 percent lower than at peer hospitals.

Cardiovascular surgeon David Frantz, M.D., expressed his admiration for the people he works with. "No one person, or group of people, achieved this goal. It is truly an institutional accomplishment. The staff at Centra Health is great. And there are many people outside of Centra who contribute to the heart program's success and can take pride in this award, as well."

"We have a goal," said cardiologist Thomas Nygaard, M.D., "to always practice service-oriented, state-of-the-art, evidence-based, cardiovascular medicine. We are firm believers in and have been dedicated to sub-specialization within cardiovascular disease. We feel that outcomes measurement, quality assurance and ownership of the program by everyone involved are critical to have the strong program that we all desire."

Dr. Nygaard agreed that teamwork helps spell the difference. "This award recognizes the accomplishments of a large group of very dedicated people who stick to our mission of providing the best care possible, at any hour of the day or night."

Solucient provides comprehensive health care information for providers, payers, employers and pharmaceutical companies. This study analyzed acute care hospitals nationwide using performance data from 2001, including publicly available Medicare MEDPAR data and Medicare cost reports.

The study scored facilities according to key measures including: risk-adjusted medical mortality, risk-adjusted surgical mortality, complications, percentage of CABG patients with internal mammary artery use, procedure volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay and wage and severity-adjusted average cost.

Additional information can be found at www.centrahealth.com or at http://www.100TopHospitals.com under the "Media" tab.