Bronson Named a 100 Top Hospital for Heart CareNovember 19, 2008 KALAMAZOO, Mich. – Thomson Reuters has announced that Bronson Methodist Hospital is one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals® for cardiovascular care. The 2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success study identifies 100 hospitals in the United States that set the highest national performance levels for both clinical and managerial excellence in heart care. Bronson is the only recipient in southwest Michigan. Other Michigan hospitals on the 2008 list include:
Bronson President & CEO Frank J. Sardone says, “This is an outstanding achievement for the heart program at Bronson and another important milestone in support of our vision to be a national leader in healthcare quality. I would like to extend congratulations and appreciation to everyone at Bronson for their focus on clinical excellence, especially our physician partners and those who work directly in cardiovascular services. This recognition confirms to patients and families in southwest Michigan that when they come to Bronson for heart care they can expect outcomes that are amongst the best in the nation.” Thomson Reuters cardiovascular study 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. To qualify as a 100 Top Hospital, Bronson achieved high scores across eight equally weighted performance criteria that reflect the use of evidence-based medicine, good clinical outcomes, high procedure volume, great efficiency, and reasonable cost. The study, now in its 10th 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 of bypass surgery is increasingly performed in centers of excellence. “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. 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. 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: teaching with cardiovascular residency programs, 30 winners; teaching without cardiovascular residency programs, 40 winners; community, 30 winners. Bronson’s achievement is in the second category. The 2008 winners were announced November 17 in Modern Healthcare magazine. Earlier this year, Bronson was named a recipient of Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals® Performance Improvement Leaders award for having achieved the fastest five-year rate of consistent organization-wide improvement in the industry. The full list for both 100 Top Hospital achievements from Thomson Reuters is available at 100tophospitals.com. About Bronson Methodist Hospital Bronson Methodist Hospital, located at 601 John St. in downtown Kalamazoo, Mich., is the flagship of Bronson Healthcare Group, a not-for-profit healthcare system serving all of southwest Michigan and northern Indiana. With 380 licensed beds and all private rooms, Bronson Methodist Hospital provides care in virtually every specialty—cardiology, orthopedics, surgery, emergency medicine, neurology, oncology—with advanced capabilities in critical care as a Level I Trauma Center; in neurological care as a Joint Commission certified Primary Stroke Center; in cardiac care as the region’s first accredited Chest Pain Emergency Center; in obstetrics as the leading BirthPlace and only high-risk pregnancy center in southwest Michigan, and in pediatrics as one of only six children's hospitals in the state. The hospital is the recipient of the 2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation's highest presidential honor for quality and organizational performance excellence, and was named one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals for 2005 by Solucient. Bronson Healthcare Group is one of Kalamazoo’s largest employers and has been ranked for six consecutive years by Working Mother magazine as one of the nation’s 100 best companies to work for. Annually, Bronson provides more than $83 million in community benefits through outreach and charitable care for the un- and under-insured. Bronson also serves the largest percentage of Medicaid patients of any Michigan hospital outside of southeast Michigan. ###
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