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Hospital Health Care Improving in U.S.

Report: Cleveland Ranks Highest Among Cities in Hospital Quality

WebMD Health News

Oct. 12, 2004 -- Overall quality is improving at America's hospitals, but a new report shows that hospital health care quality varies greatly from city to city and from hospital to hospital.

Researchers found Americans are 18% less likely to die in 2003 after hospitalization for major heart problems or pneumonia than they were in 2000, thanks largely to improvements in treating heart attacks.

Hospitals in Cleveland, Detroit, and Minneapolis-St. Paul were among the best in terms of overall hospital health care, and those in Philadelphia, Seattle, and Portland, Ore., were among the worst.

"When we looked at the data, we were very pleased to learn that overall hospital quality is improving," says researcher Samantha Collier, MD, vice president of medical affairs at HealthGrades, in a news release. "But it's important to note that quality varies widely from hospital to hospital and from procedure to procedure. We encourage everyone to do their homework and research hospitals before they check in."

Ranking Hospital Health Care Quality

The seventh annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America study compared the quality of nearly 5,000 hospitals in the U.S. in 28 different procedures and diagnoses, ranging from heart attack to knee replacement.

The second part of the study ranked the hospitals in 25 major metropolitan areas according to the quality of health care delivered for four common heart problems and the treatment of pneumonia.

Here's how the cities fared:

Rank	Metropolitan Area
1	Cleveland
2	Detroit
3	Minneapolis-St. Paul
4	Phoenix
5	Tampa, Fla.
6	Denver
7	Cincinnati, Ohio
8	Chicago
9	Miami
10	Los Angeles
11	San Diego
12	Washington
13	St. Louis
14	Atlanta
15	Houston
16	Pittsburgh
17	New York City
18	Boston
19	Kansas City, Mo.
20	Sacramento, Calif.
21	Dallas
22	San Francisco
23	Philadelphia
24	Seattle
25	Portland, Ore.

Disparities in Hospital Health Care Persist

But there was also a wide disparity in the quality of hospital health care from city to city. For example, researchers say that in 2003 a patient had more than double the chance of dying from hearty bypass surgery in Cincinnati, Ohio, compared with San Diego.

Among the cities studied, researchers found Phoenix showed the most improvement in hospital health care quality over the last four years, followed by Detroit, Cleveland, Houston, and St. Louis.

The study showed that the greatest improvement in hospital health care performance across all 25 metropolitan areas was in heart bypass surgery. Americans over age 65 had a 21% better chance of surviving the hospitalization for the procedure, which is performed to bypass blocked arteries and improve blood flow to the heart, in 2003 compared with 2000.

Similar improvements in hospital health care were found in surviving other heart-related procedures, and the chance of surviving pneumonia acquired outside the hospital increased by 14%.

But researchers say the top five metropolitan areas for overall health care quality performance --Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Tampa, Fla., -- consistently performed in the top half on all of the procedures and diagnoses studied in 2003.