Hospitals' Heart Attack Death Rates Put on Web

Jun 22, 05:46 PM

Current Headlines: By TED GRIGGS

Consumers moved another step closer to getting the kind of information they need to make informed health-care decisions with the addition Thursday of hospital death rates for heart attacks and heart failure to a federal Web site.

Heart attack patients at the 108 Louisiana hospitals surveyed had about the same chance of dying within 30 days as the national average of 16 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The chances of dying from heart failure at 117 of 119 Louisiana hospitals surveyed were also about the same as the national rate of 11 percent, according to DHHS. Willis-Knighton Medical Center in Shreveport was better than the national rate, and Christus St. Francis Cabrini Hospital in Alexandria was worse.

"It's one more step in trying to create transparency. It's allowing the outside world to look at various health-care entities and to look at them and see where they stand on various parameters," said Dr. Jay Brooks, chief of staff at Ochsner Medical Center-Baton Rouge.

Brooks said the results are good news and show that area hospitals are all doing a good job.

However, Erin Zeringue, director of quality management and patient safety for Baton Rouge General Medical Center, said the measures used by the federal agency could stand improvement, and the Web site could also be made easier for consumers to navigate.

"Everyone ranked around the national average or no different than the national average (for heart attacks)," Zeringue said. "I don't think that's probably accurate if you think about it. There are differences, there are disparities in health care across the state."

The http://hospitalcompare.com data is based on hospital admissions from July 1, 2005, to June 30. The information was adjusted to take into account previous health problems of patients.

Zeringue said another consumer Web site, http:// healthgrades.com, uses the same data but tells consumers a little bit more about the outcomes of treatment.

Terrie Sterling, chief operating officer of Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, said the hospital and its sister facilities embrace the idea of giving consumers more tools to make decisions.

However, consumers need to be cautious about the source of the information, she said. There are companies that charge hospitals fees to manipulate their data and arrange it in ways that may lead people to draw conclusions they might not otherwise.

The Lake hopes to augment the federal data by placing more measures of quality on the hospital Web site, possibly as soon as August, Sterling said. The information will be more clinically driven and clinically sound, and not just the financial data from the federal agency.

Although the heart attack and heart failure measures released Thursday are limited, it's important to provide consumers with health-care information, Sterling said. Improvements will come over time as more information is posted and the site refined.

Dr. Jonathan Weisul, chief medical officer and vice president of medical affairs for Christus St. Francis Cabrini, said the hospital also supports transparency, although the heart failure numbers were "a little disconcerting."

The hospital treated 483 patients for heart failure and had 37 deaths, Weisul said. However, more than half of the total was excluded from the quality study, in large part because of incomplete data.

In addition, Christus' early intervention program prevented lots of patients from having to be hospitalized, which also affected the death rates, Weisul said.

Weisul said the hospital asked the federal agency about amending the data to reflect the actual number of patients. But the agency declined because changing one hospital's information would require redoing the entire data base, Weisul said.

Meanwhile, the hospital has implemented a 24-7 intensive care specialist program so that an ICU physician is always on duty, Weisul said. The hospital has also added a rapid response team.

"Over the last year, we've seen a 30 percent reduction in our mortality for heart failure. So we believe the future data will show us in a much more favorable light," he said.

Kathy Walker, a spokeswoman for Willis-Knighton Medical Center in Shreveport, said the hospital follows the best practices established for treating heart failure, from giving patients aspirin and beta blockers to the use of implantable cardioverter defibrillators, devices shown to reduce the incidence of sudden death among heart failure patients.

The devices monitor heart rates and can also deliver a shock to prevent the patient's heart from beating irregularly, she said.

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