Mortality rates 71 percent lower at top-rated hospitals: HealthGrades 2008 hospital-qua...(reports on mortality rate trends in each...),Health

While we are pleased to see that the hospital industrys focus on improving care quality has continued to reduce mortality rates, a significant variation in quality among the nations best and poorest-performing hospitals persists, said Samantha Collier, MD, HealthGrades chief medical officer and one of the authors of the study. Concentrating on emulating practices from exemplary hospitals can result in improvement. If this focus were targeted to four key quality areas -- heart failure, respiratory failure, sepsis, and pneumonia -- the nation could achieve up to a 50-percent reduction in potentially preventable deaths.

The study also found wide variation in risk-adjusted mortality at the state and regional levels:

• Across all procedures and conditions, the average number of states performing statistically significantly better than predicted was 14, while an average of 19 states performed statistically significantly worse than predicted.

• The region with the lowest overall risk-adjusted mortality was the East North Central Region (IL, IN, MI, OH and WI) while the East South Central region (AL, KY, MS and TN) had the highest mortality.

• The region with the most overall improvement for all procedures and conditions was the West South Central region (AR, LA, OK and TX), where the risk-adjusted mortality dropped by 13.5 percent. The least improvement was seen in the Mountain region (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NE, NV, NM, UT, and WY), with a decline of 8.8 percent.

• The East North Central region (IL, IN, MI, OH, and WI), had the highest percentage of best-performing hospitals those hospitals that are among the best 15 percent for risk-adjusted mortality overall at 26 percent.

• Less than seven percent of hospitals within the East South Central region (AL, KY, MS, and TN) and the New Engl
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