A new study shows that hospitals in some states regularly outperform others for treating heart attack and heart failure.
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In the event of a heart attack or heart failure, the best course of action is to head directly to a hospital. And if that hospital is in New Jersey, so much the better.
The Garden State was among the states with the least deaths and fewest hospital readmissions following a heart attack or heart failure, according to a new study published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
The study examined data on heart attack and heart failure patients from about 600,000 hospital admissions across the country between July 2005 and June 2008. The results showed that, while there was room for improvement in care across the board, the hospitals in some states -- like New Jersey, for example -- consistently outperformed hospitals in other states in terms of patient mortality or hospital readmission in the 30 days after they received treatment.
"While hospitals know what their financial performance is like, they are much less aware of what their clinical performance is because they lacked metrics," said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, professor of medicine in the section of cardiology at Yale University School of Medicine and the lead author of the study. "Being transparent galvanizes action at the hospital level, at the board level, and at the community level to improve performance."
Some of the states in the top fifth of the country for preventing death and hospital readmission before 30 days after treatment included:
New Jersey
Vermont
New Hampshire
Washington
Oregon
An average of 16.6 percent of heart attack patients died within 30 days of hospital admission across the country, but this number dropped to about 10.9 percent in hospitals in the best performing states. The average number of heart failure patients who died nationally was 11.1 percent but was 6.6 percent in hospitals in the best performing states.
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