Hospital Rankings Partially Accurate for Heart Patients

It appears that for heart attack patients, the rating by U.S. News & World Report may be justified. A new study published in the July edition of Archives of Internal Medicine found that patients treated at hospitals ranked by U.S. News & World Report are less likely to die 30 days after being admitted than those at an unranked hospital. The study also found that ranked hospitals were more likely to have lower than expected overall death rates.

The study, performed at Yale University Medical School, assessed the thirty-day mortality rate among 13,000 patients, admitted to 50 US News and World Report's "Best in Heart and Heart Surgery, " and among 250,000 patients admitted to 3,800 non-ranked hospitals. After factoring in patient characteristics, the 30-day mortality rate was slightly lower in ranked hospitals, at 16% vs. 18%. However, when they divided the hospitals into groups based upon these rates, 70% of the ranked hospitals were in the group with the least deaths, and only 8% were in the group with the most deaths.

When they examined hospitals based on overall mortality rate (not just at 30 days) 11 ranked hospitals and 28 unranked hospitals had mortality rates of less than 1%. The authors of the study wrote, "the U.S. News & World Report ranking list does not include many hospitals that have outstanding performances for the care of patients with acute myocardial infarction [heart attack]."