Pennsylvania, New Jersey release hospital quality performance reports

Death rates from heart bypass and valve surgeries performed at Pennsylvania hospitals have declined significantly in recent years, according to a Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council report released on Thursday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

The report examined 11,022 bypass and 5,611 heart valve procedures statewide in 2006. The report found that 1.8% of bypass surgery patients died during their hospital stay that year -- a 54% decline since 1990. Death rates for valve procedures also declined when compared with rates from 2005, according to the report.

The report also found that 30-day readmissions for complications were down for both types of operations, but 13% of bypass patients and nearly one in five heart valve patients needed to return to the hospital within 30 days for additional care. The overall number of bypass surgeries in 2006 fell by 7% from a year earlier. Bypass surgeries are declining because doctors are more often using stents to prop open arteries, according to the Inquirer (Goldstein, Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/18).

The report is available online.

New Jersey

In New Jersey, the fifth annual Hospital Performance Report released on Wednesday found that the state exceeded national standards for best practices of care in 17 of 23 areas in 2007, but that the state is still below the national average in several categories, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. The report, released by the state Department of Health and Senior Services, includes performance data from the state's 73 acute-care hospitals and one specialty heart hospital.

The report found that five hospitals in the state received perfect scores for heart attack treatment, which indicated, among other things, that aspirin was given to patients upon their arrival and discharge 100% of the time. For heart failure treatment, the top 50% of hospitals received an overall score of at least 93%. For pneumonia treatment, the top 10% of hospitals scored at least 98%. The report also found that New Jersey hospitals treated heart attack patients within 90 minutes 67% of the time.

New Jersey Health Commissioner Heather Howard said, "Making these rates public generates healthy competition among hospitals," adding that the gap between the highest- and lowest-performing hospitals is continuing to narrow (Stewart, Newark Star-Ledger, 9/18).

The report is available online.