Web site provides information on hospital death rates

Patients now have a new way to compare quality of care at the region's hospitals.

This past week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched a new tool that gives the public access to hospitals' mortality rates for conditions like pneumonia and heart failure.

Previously, visitors to the agency's Hospital Compare Web site could find out whether a hospital's death rates were above, below or equal to the national average. But now the agency has disclosed each hospital's estimated death rates for heart attacks, congestive heart failure and pneumonia.

Mortality rates for these conditions are a reliable gauge of a hospital's care, experts have said.

Releasing this data to the public makes hospitals accountable for the quality of care they offer, said Tony Salters, spokesman for CMS' Dallas regional office.

"We believe all hospitals, no matter how well they're doing, have the opportunity to improve the care they deliver to patients," Salters said. "The publication of this data was a way to continue improving the processes of care."

Prior to making the data available on the Hospital Compare site, the agency released the information to USA Today. The newspaper released a list Tuesday of hospitals that had the best and worst mortality rates in the country for certain conditions.

Three Rio Grande Valley hospitals made the list of hospitals that performed better than the national average in heart-failure mortality: Valley Baptist Medical Center-Harlingen, McAllen Medical Center and McAllen Heart Hospital.

Valley Baptist's heart-failure death rate was about 8.5 percent of patients in a 30-day period - better than the national death rate of 11 percent. McAllen Medical Center and Heart Hospital, which are listed together, had a heart failure mortality rate of 7.7 percent, also better than the national rate.

The hospitals' heart attack and pneumonia death rates were comparable to the national rate. All of the region's other hospitals had mortality rates similar to the national average.

"We are very proud of the Valley Baptist Medical Center-Harlingen team of nurses, physicians and other healthcare professionals whose dedication made these ‘better than national' results for the treatment of heart failure possible," VBMC-Harlingen CEO Dan McLean said.

"We are proud to be one of only three hospitals in Texas and 37 in the nation to receive this recognition."

Gilda Romero, chief operating officer of McAllen Heart Hospital, said in a statement: "Our ranking by CMS Hospital Compare as one of the lowest in mortality rates for congestive heart failure, coupled with our ranking as the number-one cardiac surgery program in the (state), further reflects that our community does not have to leave the Valley for heart care."

On CMS' site, consumers also can find out how well hospitals abided by quality care standards for heart attack treatment, surgery-complication prevention and asthma care.

On The Web

Hospital Compare

Hospital data on a variety of conditions: www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov

Mortality rates: http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov/hospital/mortalitytool/index.asp