Mercy Health Partners Named One of the Nation's Top Cardiovascular Hospitals by Solucient

Muskegon, MI – November 20, 2006- Mercy Health Partners was recently named one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals® for cardiovascular care by Solucient®, a Thomson healthcare business. This award reflects the outstanding quality and efficiency of cardiovascular care provided at MHP. The multidisciplinary approach from the cardiovascular team has attributed to this most recent recognition.

The annual Solucient award for cardiovascular services objectively measures performance on key criteria at the nation's top performing acute-care hospitals. This is the first time that MHP hasbeen recognized with this honor.

As the nation's leading source of information products for the healthcare industry, Solucient provides tools and vital insights that healthcare managers use to improve the performance of their organizations. Solucient's expertise and proven solutions enable providers and pharmaceutical companies to drive business growth, manage costs and deliver high quality care.

“MHP is excited to be named as a Solucient Top 100 Hospital for Cardiovascular care,” says Theodore Boeve, MD, cardiothoracic surgeon. “Cardiac surgery has been fortunate to have the strong support of our community’s primary care and specialty medical providers as well as the lakeshore hospitals. We can continue to enjoy this level of care if we as a community continue to work together.”

Earlier this year, MHP was recognized by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan as a Center of Excellence in cardiac care and as #1 in the Region for Heart Surgery by HealthGrades.

“MHP has provided this community with quality healthcare for over 100 years,” says Roger Spoelman, President and CEO. “In the past several years, MHP has been recognized by numerous rating organizations as a leader in cardiac care. It is a blessing to see this community have access to this outstanding level of care.

Among key findings from this study are:

If peer hospitals (non-winners) provided the same quality of cardiovascular care as the 100 Top Hospitals facilities, survival rates could increase by more than 8,000 patients each year.
Complications of care could also decrease in peer hospitals. Approximately 575 additional patients could be complication-free.
The average 100 Top Hospitals Cardiovascular winner meets the recommended core measures standards for 95 percent of its heart attack (acute myocardial infarction or AMI) patients, compared with 93 percent at the average peer, or non-winning, hospital. Similar differences were seen for congestive heart failure (CHF) patients. Core measures — a set of widely accepted minimum standards of care for all patients, based on scientific evidence — are used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and approved by the National Quality Forum.
Both medical and surgical cardiovascular patients experience markedly higher survival rates at winning hospitals. For example, winning hospitals had 21 percent fewer deaths than expected for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) patients while peer hospitals had only 1 percent fewer deaths than expected.
Winning hospitals performed up to 80 percent more percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) than their peers, and about 50 percent more CABGs. Previous research has shown that procedure volume is a critical factor in outcomes for cardiovascular patients.
Benchmark hospitals are proving more efficient in treating cardiovascular patients. The average 100 Top Hospitals Cardiovascular winner discharges patients half a day earlier and at an average cost that is about 13 percent less than its peers.

Solucient® scored facilities in eight key performance areas: risk-adjusted medical mortality, risk-adjusted surgical mortality, risk-adjusted complications, core measures score, percentage of CABG patients with internal mammary artery use, procedure volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and wage- and severity-adjusted average cost.

The measures were calculated for three classes of hospitals with the following number of winners in each:

Teaching with cardiovascular residency programs, 30 winners
Teaching without cardiovascular residency programs, 40 winners
Community, 30 winners

Mercy Health Partners is among the 40 winners in the teaching hospital without a cardiovascular residency program category.

More information on this study and other 100 Top Hospitals research is available at http://www.100tophospitals.com.

About Mercy Health Partners
MHP is the specialty referral hospital along the lakeshore. MHP’s specialty services include open heart, cardiology, vascular, emergency services, cancer care, orthopedic and spine surgery, urology, obstetrics and gynecology, bariatric surgery/weight management, nephrology, ENT, palliative care and rehabilitation. MHP promotes excellence in a variety of areas through specialized institutes and centers where specialty and primary care physicians and staff work collaboratively to enhance the patients care experience. Some of these centers include the Heart and Vascular Institute, the Centers for Women’s Health, the Center for Weight Management, the Imaging Center of Excellence and the Emergency Center.