Repeat heart attack and death linked to hospitals with low care scores
In low-scoring hospitals, 3 percent of heart attack patients returned to the hospital for a new heart attack within 30 days.
Heart attack patients treated at hospitals with low care scores are at greater risk for another heart attack and/or death due to cardiovascular causes, Rutgers researchers found.
Their study, published in the American Journal of Cardiology, compared care scores in the New Jersey Hospital Performance Reports with one-month and one-year rates of readmission for heart attack or death due to cardiovascular causes.
Researchers reviewed the electronic medical records of more than 160,000 patients at 80 New Jersey acute care hospitals from 2004 to 2015.
IMPACT
In low-scoring hospitals, 3 percent of heart attack patients returned to the hospital for a new heart attack within 30 days. At one year, 13 percent were readmitted and about 8 percent died from cardiovascular causes.
Patients who were admitted to a teaching hospital had a 25 percent lower chance of readmission at one month. At one year, the chance of these patients suffering cardiovascular death was 10 percent lower than patients initially admitted to a non-teaching hospital.
The study found a higher risk for a new heart attack and/or death among patients with conditions including acute heart failure, high blood pressure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But those risks were reduced in patients who were treated at a teaching hospital.
The main takeaway is that hospital performance scores have real health implications for heart attack patients, and when asked to prioritize cost or safety, patients prefer the sager hospital 97 percent of the time, regardless of cost.
The authors noted that healthcare providers can reduce the risk of death or recurrence of heart attack by calling them after discharge to assess whether they are taking their medications as prescribed.
THE TREND
Thirty-day hospital readmission risk has become an important measure of the quality of hospital care. Medicare and other healthcare payers have implemented "pay for performance" programs including financial penalties for patients with unplanned readmissions.
In response, hospitals have developed risk calculators to identify patients at high risk for readmission and target them for efforts to prevent adverse outcomes.
Twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: jeff.lagasse@himssmedia.com
