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

Muskegon, MI-November 21, 2008 –; Mercy Health Partners has been named one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals for cardiovascular care by the Healthcare business of Thomson Reuters. This is the second time Mercy Health Partners has received the cardiovascular award. Earlier this year, Mercy Health Partners was recognized as a Top 100 Hospital in the nation by Thomson Reuters.

The annual study — 2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success— examined the performance of 970 hospitals by analyzing clinical outcomes for patients diagnosed with heart failure and heart attacks and for those who received coronary bypass surgery and angioplasties.

“This recognition from Thomson Reuters is the result of the continued dedicated effortsfrom our medical staff and associates throughout Mercy Health Partners,” said Roger Spoelman, President and CEO. “To have this level of care available along the lakeshore for the communities we serve is fantastic. This is a testament of the quality of care that the patients who come to Mercy Health Partners will receive and have to come to expect from our organization."

The study, in its tenth year, found that the 100 Top Hospitals cardiovascular award winners, as a group, performed 63 percent more bypass surgeries and 42 percent more angioplasties than peer hospitals. This may suggest that performance of bypass surgery is increasingly performed in centers of excellence.

While the average mortality rate for cardiovascular patients is very low (3.4 percent), the mortality rate for bypass surgery was 26 percent lower in the 100 Top Hospitals cardiovascular winners. The award-winning hospitals demonstrated higher performance on the evidence-based core measures published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and cost $1,542 less per case, on average.