For the eighth consecutive year, Lankenau Medical Center has been named one of the nation’s 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals® by Truven Health Analytics in the “Teaching Hospitals with Cardiovascular Residency Programs” category. The winning hospitals were announced in the Nov. 10 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine. Lankenau is one of only two hospitals in Pennsylvania and in the Philadelphia region to be named to the list.
“This award continues to acknowledge our strong cardiovascular care presence in the region,” said Phil Robinson, president, Lankenau Medical Center. “Thanks to our cardiovascular services team’s commitment to superior patient care and outcomes, our program continues to grow on each of our campuses and within our physician practices.”
Home to the most robotically-assisted heart bypass surgeries in the nation, Lankenau is continually recognized for cardiovascular excellence. In fall 2013, Lankenau opened its Heart Pavilion, a specially-designed building that increases patient comfort, convenience and safety, improves operational and environmental efficiencies, and utilizes advanced technology and clinical capabilities. At the same time, Main Line Health formed the Lankenau Heart Institute, the system brand for cardiovascular services. The Lankenau Heart Institute brings together the clinical expertise of all four Main Line Health acute care hospitals and community cardiology practices to ensure that patients receive a level of quality, service and experience that is unprecedented in the region. Through the coordination of services system-wide, the Lankenau Heart Institute delivers preventive, diagnostic, therapeutic and rehabilitative cardiovascular services at each of our hospital-based locations.
The study, now in its 16th year, singled out 50 hospitals that achieved superior clinical outcomes in this critical area of hospital care. As is the case with the 100 Top Hospital study published annual by Truven Health, the rigorous processes used to calculate and measure hospital service lines leverage industry leading, risk-adjusted methodologies developed and maintained by Truven Health scientists over many years and are widely-regarded as the leading program for evaluating leadership impact in a hospital, as well as in evaluating quality indicators and efficiencies.
The Truven Health 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals® study evaluates performance in key performance areas: risk-adjusted mortality, risk-adjusted complications, core measures (a group of measures that assess process of care), percentage of coronary bypass patients with internal mammary artery use, 30-day mortality rates, 30-day readmission rates, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and wage- and severity-adjusted average cost. The study has been conducted annually since 1999. This is Truven Health Analytics researchers analyzed 2012 and 2013 Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) data, 2013 Medicare cost reports, and 2014 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Compare data.
“The study shows that 39 of the 50 hospitals in the 2015 study, 78 percent of the winners, are facilities within a larger health system," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and the 100 Top Hospitals program at Truven Health Analytics. "This indicates that the overall aptitude of hospitals to improve care deliverables increases when they work as a coordinated team to implement well established, proven and integrated best practices from one facility to the next. Again, as we find in the 100 Top study, this also infers a significant correlation between hospital leadership and their organization’s outcome and quality achievements.”
The study and subsequent analysis of the positive variances these leading cardio service hospitals show indicate an opportunity for a broader national impact for cardiovascular patient, should these results be replicated. In fact, if all cardiovascular providers in the U.S. performed at the level of this year's winners, more than:
- Nearly 9,500 additional lives could be saved
- $1 billion could be saved
- 3,000 additional bypass and angioplasty patients could be complication free
More information on this study and other 100 Top Hospitals research is available at 100tophospitals.com.