Best-Performing Hospitals Consistently Outperform Poor-Performing Hospitals for Women's Health
HealthGrades recognized 169 hospitals as 2009/2010 Women's Health Excellence AwardTM recipients. This places them within the top 5% of all hospitals nationwide.
Women in the U.S. account for over 60 percent of all hospital admissions and women are being affected more and more by chronic diseases like congestive heart failure. These chronic diseases will result in more hospitalizations for women. The data reflect that women are being hospitalized for heart failure at a higher annual percentage increase rate than men.
Because of the wide quality gaps that exist in care between women and men, and between hospitals and states, women should take care to research hospitals and choose the ones best for them.
The HealthGrades Sixth Annual Women's Health in American Hospitals Study has found that among eligible hospitals, a total of 18,089 lives could have been saved and 6,849 complications avoided if all eligible hospitals performed at the level of the best-performing hospitals in women's health.
Hospitals that receive this award rank among the top 5% of all hospitals nationwide when it comes to providing care to women in three areas: Women's Medicine (heart attack, congestive heart failure, pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and stroke); Women's Cardiovascular Procedures (coronary bypass surgery, peripheral vascular bypass, coronary interventional procedures, resection/replacement of abdominal aortic aneurysm, carotid surgery, and valve replacement); and Women's Bone & Joint Health (total knee and total hip replacement surgeries, spinal surgeries, and hip fracture repair).
Other Findings
- Improvement in mortality and morbidity for top-performing hospitals was 33% compared with the poor-performing hospitals.
- Only one state, Colorado, was in the top 10 (lowest mortality and morbidity) for all three categories of women's health. Florida, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and South Dakota ranked top 10 in at least two of three categories of women's health.
- 82% (14,930) of the potentially preventable deaths were associated with just four diagnoses: pneumonia, stroke, heart failure, and heart attack.
HealthGrades analyzed more than 2.6 million hospitalizations using Medicare data from all 50 states from 2005 through 2007 for this study.