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Sacred Heart Ranked Among Nation’s Top 5 Percent Of Hospitals
February 15, 2011
The nation’s leading independent health care ratings organization has ranked Sacred Heart Hospital among the top 5 percent of all U.S. hospitals for clinical excellence.
As part of its ninth annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence study, HealthGrades identified those hospitals performing in the top 5 percent nationwide across 26 different medical procedures and diagnoses.
Based on the results of the national study, HealthGrades recognized Sacred Heart by presenting hospital leaders with the Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence Award™. The rankings are based on a comprehensive study of patient death and complication rates at virtually every hospital in the country.
“Sacred Heart Hospital is among an elite group of hospitals in the United States,” Lisa Esch, vice president of professional services for HealthGrades, told an audience at the hospital. ”There are 268 hospitals in the nation and 26 in Florida that are recipients of this year’s award. Our study showed that those top-rated hospitals had a mortality rate among Medicare patients that was almost 30 percent lower than all other hospitals.”
In presenting the award to Carol Schmidt, president of Sacred Heart Hospital, HealthGrades also recognized Sacred Heart’s quality in specific categories of care, noting that Sacred Heart ranked among the top 5 percent of hospitals in the nation for treatment of stroke. The study showed Sacred Heart’s risk-adjusted inpatient mortality rate for Medicare patients diagnosed with stroke was 51 percent lower than the average nationwide.
Based on the data, HealthGrades awarded special Excellence Awards to Sacred Heart in the areas of:
- Stroke Care
- Critical Care
- Pulmonary Care, and
- Bariatric Surgery
In comparing the performance among hospitals for specific medical conditions and treatments, HealthGrades assigns a rating of 1-star (poor), 3-star (as expected) or 5-star (better than expected.) HealthGrades gave Sacred Heart a 5-star rating in 14 categories that included: treatment of heart attack, heart failure, hip fracture repair, pneumonia, gastrointestinal bleeds, peripheral vascular bypass, and respiratory failure.
“This award is a milestone in our journey toward excellence in clinical care that began more than seven years ago at Sacred Heart and continues today,” said Laura S. Kaiser, president and CEO of Sacred Heart Health System. “This achievement is the result of an unwavering focus on the quality of care provided to our sickest patients at the most important times. It truly has been a team effort by many physicians and clinical staff across multiple departments.”
Unlike other hospital quality studies, HealthGrades evaluates hospitals solely on patients’ clinical outcomes: rates of deaths and complications in hospitalized patients. HealthGrades’ analysis is based on approximately 40 million Medicare patient discharges for the years 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Comments
16 Responses to “Sacred Heart Ranked Among Nation’s Top 5 Percent Of Hospitals”
We are fortunate to have three hospitals in Pensacola. People can have a bad experience at any hospital but there are choices (if your insurance covers all three). I’m glad to know Sacred Heart got a very good rating as we have doctors there. They and the nurses seem to be very competent. Their answering service is a different story though.
Well, as long as we’re “cherry picking” – here’s an example of our health care versus that of the UK. My wife’s Aunt in England, after waiting for about 4 months for a clinic visit (outpatient), was told that she had an “intestinal blockage” that could only be corrected with surgery. In the US this would be called an “acute to emergent” condition requiring immediate surgery – over there they placed her on a waiting list and told her to expect her surgery in about 9 months (or longer).
The family flew her to NYC, where she was seen the same day, and she was immediately taken to surgery to have a resection of her GI tract to take out the blockage, which was actually found to be a complete obstruction – an otherwise fatal condition. She lived. Had she stayed in the UK and waited she would be dead. The American doctors gave her weeks to live if she’d have stayed there.
I can’t evaluate every poor outcome, or every “dissatisfied” customer – sometimes people’s expectations in their health care encounters are astronomical and impossible to meet. Sometimes they are legitimate and improvement is needed – as I said, it’s a human system and thus subject to human error. The guiding principle of every physician is, “First, do no harm”.
It’s that simple.
I thank God that we have the Health-care system that we have, and hope that 0bamacare gets repealed, revoked, and rescinded.
To place a system like that of the UK, Canada or elsewhere in America is just plain Evil. It will kill people by the tens and hundreds of thousands. That’s democide.
I thank God every day for our Catholic Hospitals that embrace life and reject the Cult of Death that is infecting our nation.
Thank you “d”, well said.
>>THEY DIDN’T PUT MY WHOLE COMMENT IT
We don’t edit comments.
OLD SOLDIER,,,,,,,THEY DIDN’T PUT MY WHOLE COMMENT IT BUT WILL TRY AGAIN<<<MY HUSBANDS EAR WAS POURING BLOOD OUT OF IT,,,,,AND HE HAD A TRIPLE BYPASS 2 YRS AGO……..
Excuse me OLD SOLDIER<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>> AND HE DOES MONTER HIS
BP. THANK YOU<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
My mother passed away last fall at Sacred Heart. The doctors and nurses in the oncology unit could not have been any better. They treated us like family. They laughed with us, they cried with us and prayed with us throughout our 2 week stay. I have had experience with all of the hospitals in P’cola and Mobile and Sacred Heart is the best I have seen.
Although no hospital can be perfect each and every time that someone visits, we are very fortunate to have the level of hospital care that we have for such a rural area. To have three very large and well staffed specialty hospitals such as Sacred Heart, West Florida and Baptist in our backyards is quite amazing. Then to the West, we have several other major hospitals just across the state line including a Level 1 Trauma Center with a fully staffed burn unit. Anyone can have a bad experience on a individual basis on any given day. As we are not perfect, neither are doctors and nurses perfect. They do however strive to provide the most excellent healthcare that can be provided. Quit all your complaining and be thankful for the level of medical care which we do have available to us. These wonderfully equipped hospitals could be located many, many hours away instead of less than an hour. Think about how much more death would occur could not get to these larger hospitals within the short period of time required now.
Old Soldier, you are so right. When I hear people complain about the level of health care we have here in the US, I want to tell them to jump the border to Mexico or Canada and see if they like it there!
Sacred Heart is one of the absolute best hospitals in the world. I have been a guest there on more than one occasion and my family members have too. We have always been treated with respect and the medical care we received was outstanding.
My father went in there with a death sentence and came out with his heart fixed, thanks to God and Dr. Lundquist. A year later, I walked into the ER with what I thought was a gallbladder attack and woke up in critical care. (I was having a heart attack, not a gallbladder attack. Silly me.)
The coronary team actually set a new time record for angioplasty that day. 51 minutes from the time I checked in at the desk in the ER, I was out of surgery and in recovery, after having two stents inserted into arteries in my heart. None of the team was on duty that Saturday – they all were paged to the hospital and still managed to pull off that incredibly fast surgery. I don’t remember any of it, but God and Dr. Rogers saved my life.
As for the wait time in the ER, there was none. The people there recognized a heart attack when they saw one and they were cramming baby aspirin in my mouth at the same time they were pushing me into a wheelchair. I was hooked up to an EKG within two minutes of walking into the hospital. The hospital actually has paramedics and RN’s patrolling the waiting area at the ER. If they see someone deteriorating or showing signs of distress, they get them to the back immediately.
Sacred Heart will forever and always be my first choice among the hospitals in this area!
This award may be based on mortality and complication rates, but they would be rated in last place for patient satisfaction.
After the experiences we had when my mom was hospitalized (twice), we go to Baptist and love them. Sacred was so bad I ended up writing letters to Madden, the Patient Care and Safety Manager and the head of the Haven nursing home (where my mom was sent after SHH dropped her and injured her knee to the point she needed rehab).
We called for nurses for over 20 minutes before I finally went and grabbed one – my heart-attack victim mother was experiencing severe nausea, claminess and dizziness. Turns out she had bad milk for her lunch.
old soldier..very enlightened perspective…couldnt have said it better!
This is an evaluation of in-patient treatment, not an evaluation of out-patient clinics.
And, sadly, there are plenty of people walking around without knowing that their BP is 220/110 (or higher), a slow killer to be sure, but not life threatening in the acute sense that a myocardial infarction might be. Know your blood pressure – it’s the silent killer and a chronic, not acute illness.
Sacred Heart is a human institution, and has its limitations, they can’t hire one doctor for every patient that rolls through the doors.
A two hour wait for “high blood pressure” in an Emergency Room is quite quick anywhere – there’s a system called Triage in place in most sensibly run ERs.
In the Canadian or UK system the patient wouldn’t have even been seen, and would have waited several months for an out-patient clinic visit. In some Australian states the medical system is collapsing under a social mandate, and those services are rapidly becoming unavailable. Perhaps a picture of what’s yet to come under 0bamacare…oh, Utopian joy.
Liberals lie – seek the Truth.
Sacred Heart Hospital may be excellent in treating certain serious medical issues, but their Urgent Care Centers are a different story. If they misdiagnose a problem and cause a minor malady to turn into a serious medical issue for the patient, they will pass the buck and tell the patient to find a physician or hospital outside their network. Two years ago, I was told by their staff on Hwy 29 (on my second visit to their facility regarding the same problem!!!) that they are not connected to the Main Hospital and the Urgent Care Center could not handle my problem anymore because of the infection that had set in.
Regardless of any health care ratings and surveys, my vote goes to Andrews Institute in Gulf Breeze who were there when I needed them and removed the object that was imbedded in the bottom of my foot.
If thats the case WHY did my Husband lay there for 2 hours with BP 220 over 110 before a Dr. Came in and checked him ? And was released with BP still 182 over 108
just asking,It was 2 hours before Dr came in,,,,,,,
It’s good to know that we have a first class hospital in the area. I for one will try to have any planned future surgery there.