How do you best survive a hospital visit? Five stars!

William Atkins
Tuesday, 13 October 2009 18:44

Science - Health

According to the latest HealthGrades.com survey (taken from 2006 to 2008), the top-rated hospitals in the United States, those with five stars, give you a much better chance of getting out alive!


The “The Twelfth Annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study,” released in October 2009, by Health Grade, Inc. is the largest annual study of hospital visits in the United States.

The report, by the independent health care ratings organization Health Grades, Inc., compasses about 5,000 nonfederal hospitals in the nation.

During the study, conducted from 2006 to 2008, researchers at Health Grades looked at nearly forty million Medicare hospital records with respect to procedures and diagnoses and to mortality and complications from these hospital actions.

Read the report at HealthGrades 2010 (1 MB pdf file).

The main conclusion of the study is that citizens of the United States have a 52% lower chance of dying at a top-rated hospital than an average-rated hospital.

In addition, the study found that people have an 8% lower chance of dying in hospitals that have a Stroke Certification from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) than hospitals that do not have this certification.

According to the HealthGrades article “2010 Fall Ratings,” the study “… found a wide gap in quality between the nation’s best hospitals and all others. According to the study, patients at highly rated hospitals have a 52% lower chance of dying compared with the U.S. hospital average, a quality chasm that has persisted for the last decade even as mortality rates, in general, have declined.”

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