HEALTH
Tue, Oct 13, 2009
Beebe earns national quality
award for orthopaedic care
Patient outcomes earn high marks
Beebe Medical Center announced Tuesday, Oct. 13, that its orthopaedic care is ranked among the top 5 percent of all hospitals in the nation. The ranking was made by HealthGrades, an independent healthcare ratings company, and is part of a national study of patient outcomes in the nation’s 5,000 nonfederal hospitals.

» Learn about Beebe at: beebemed.org
HealthGrades said Beebe Medical Center is the only hospital in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia to receive five-star ratings for all orthopaedic procedures measured by HealthGrades.

“We are honored to have earned this recognition from HealthGrades, and we are extremely proud of our Beebe team,” said Jeffery M. Fried, Beebe Medical Center president and CEO. “Our goal at Beebe Medical Center is to continually strive to reach and maintain excellence in healthcare. This rating reflects the dedication of everyone in the medical center family - our medical staff, our employees, our board of directors and our volunteers to consistently offer quality healthcare.”

BEEBE'S MISSION
Beebe Medical Center is a not-for-profit community medical center with a charitable mission to encourage healthy living, prevent illness and restore optimal health with the people residing, working or visiting in Cape Region communities.
Beebe Medical Center also is ranked best for orthopaedics on the Delmarva Peninsula for the fourth consecutive year, and is ranked No. 1 in Delaware for overall orthopaedic care for the fourth year in a row. Beebe Medical Center also received five-star ratings for the treatment of heart attack, pneumonia, stroke, gastrointestinal bleeding and sepsis.

A wide variation in quality exists among American hospitals, according to the 12th annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America study. Patients were 80 percent less likely to experience a major complication in five-star rated hospitals when compared with one-star rated hospitals across a range of procedures studied such as knee replacement and hip replacement surgeries.

Top-performing hospitals also dramatically outperformed the national average, with patients experiencing, on average, 61 percent fewer in-hospital complications among the procedures studied.

The study also found that if all hospitals performed at the level of a five-star rated hospital, 110,687 orthopaedic in-hospital complications may have been avoided among Medicare patients over the three years studied.

Across all the 17 procedures and diagnoses in which mortality was studied, there was an approximate 72 percent lower chance of dying in a five-star rated hospital compared to a one-star rated hospital.
HealthGrades ratings reflect hospital track records

The HealthGrades study, the largest annual report of its kind, analyzed patient outcomes in nearly 40 million Medicare hospitalization records from 5,000 hospitals from 2006 through 2008.

HealthGrades’ hospital ratings and awards reflect the track record of patient outcomes at hospitals in the form of mortality and complication rates. HealthGrades rates hospitals independently based on data that hospitals submit to the federal government. No hospital can opt in or out of being rated, and no hospital pays to be rated.

For 28 procedures and treatments, HealthGrades issues star ratings that reflect the mortality and complication rates for each category of care. Hospitals receiving a five-star rating have mortality or complication rates that are below the national average to a statistically significant degree.

A three-star rating means the hospital performs as expected. One-star ratings indicate the hospital’s mortality or complication rates in that procedure or treatment are statistically higher than average. Because the risk profiles of patient populations at hospitals are not alike, HealthGrades risk adjusts the data to allow for apples-to-apples comparisons.

More information on HealthGrades studies, including the complete methodology, can be found at healthgrades.com
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