Erlanger Health System Named One of the Nation's Top Cardiovascular Hospitals by Thomson Reuter's

Erlanger Health System has been named one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals® for cardiovascular care by the Healthcare business of Thomson Reuters.

The annual study—2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success—examined the performance of 970 hospitals by analyzing clinical outcomes for patients diagnosed with heart failure and heart attacks and for those who received coronary bypass surgery and angioplasties. The 2008 winners were announced on November 17 in Modern Healthcare magazine.

"These hospitals provide enormous value to their communities because heart disease is still the nation's number one killer. They have set the new national standard for cardiovascular disease outcomes, process of care, efficiency, and lower costs," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs in the Healthcare business of Thomson Reuters.

The study, in its tenth year, found that the 100 Top Hospitals cardiovascular award winners, as a group, performed 63 percent more bypass surgeries and 42 percent more angioplasties than peer hospitals. This may suggest that performance by bypass surgery is increasingly performed in centers of excellence.

While the average mortality rate for cardiovascular patients is very low (3.4 percent), the mortality rate for bypass surgery was 26 percent lower in the 100 Top Hospitals cardiovascular winners. The award-winning hospitals demonstrated higher performance on the evidence-based core measures published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and cost $1,542 less per case, on average.

"This achievement is in recognition of the dedicated services of our physicians and staff," said Erlanger President and CEO, Jim Brexler. "We have had a very strong commitment to continuous improvement and the use of metrics, working to best practices and benchmarking ourselves," he added, noting that "Erlanger publishes all of its quality data on its website and this transparency helps keep the Erlanger team focused."

The 100 Top Hospitals study focused on short-term, acute care, non-federal U.S. hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of cardiology patients. Thomson Reuters researchers analyzed 2006 and 2007 Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) data, 2007 Medicare cost reports, and data from other sources. They scored hospitals in 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.

The measures were calculated for three classes of hospitals with the following number of winners in each:

• Teaching with cardiovascular residency programs, 30 winners
• Teaching without cardiovascular residency programs, 40 winners
• Community, 30 winners

Since performing the region's first open heart surgery in 1960, Erlanger's Heart and Vascular Center has become the region's leader in complete cardiac care. Erlanger offers the latest technology for diagnosing and treating heart diseases, including a full range of diagnostic testing. Our services address the needs of adults, as well as children, working with the pediatric cardiologists at T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital, the region's only hospital dedicated for the care of children.