The Fifth Annual HealthGrades Women's Health in American Hospitals study analyzes the quality of care at U.S. hospitals for women and their newborns and for heart disease and stroke outcomes in women. The need to better understand the difference in quality outcomes for women seeking maternity care and inhospital treatment for cardiovascular disease is essential given the combined impact these conditions have on the U.S. healthcare system.
Best-performing hospitals had almost 51 percent fewer maternal complications among women who had vaginal births compared to poor-performing hospitals.
Best-performing hospitals had almost 40 percent lower risk-adjusted mortality among women treated for cardiovascular disease than the poor-performing hospitals and 22 percent lower risk-adjusted mortality than average-performing hospitals.
Each year more women are hospitalized than men. In fact, women account for nearly 60 percent of all hospital admissions. Primarily driven by pregnancy-related conditions, women make up 75 percent of the hospitalizations for patients ages 18-44. For patients 65+, women represent 58 percent of all hospital stays, many of these are related to cardiovascular disease. Childbirth is the most common reason for hospitalization in the U.S. For many women, hospitalization due to childbirth is their first experience with inpatient care. For these women and their families, it is important to have comparative information about the quality differences that exist among hospital maternity care programs.
Cardiovascular disease kills one woman every minute in the U.S.; therefore, it is equally important for women to understand the differences that exist in the outcomes related to the inhospital treatment of cardiovascular disease. These differences exist despite significant gains in awareness, knowledge and perceptions related to cardiovascular disease. These gains have resulted in women taking positive action to lower the cardiovascular disease risk for both family members and themselves.
Despite these improvements in education and prevention, variations in outcomes for in-hospital care exist for women. The variations are twofold. First there is a gap in how efficiently cardiovascular disease is identified in women and how effectively the disease is treated in women compared to men. Second, there is variation in outcomes from one hospital to another.
The women's health ratings were based upon a hospital's inhospital risk-adjusted cardiac/stroke mortality and maternity care rating. Hospitals had to have an overall rating from each area to be considered.
For maternity care ratings, HealthGrades analyzed the following factors for each hospital:
For cardiac/stroke ratings, HealthGrades analyzed the following six procedures/diagnoses (cohorts) for each hospital's female patients:
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