May 21, 2015

VUMC lands high marks on new hospital quality rating from U.S. News and World Report

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) achieved high marks on U.S. News and World Report’s newest rating for hospital quality.

(photo by Daniel Dubois)

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) achieved high marks on U.S. News and World Report’s newest rating for hospital quality.

The magazine’s first-ever ‘Best Hospitals for Common Care’ ratings cover nearly every hospital in the nation and evaluate the performance of each one in three common surgical procedures — heart bypass, hip replacement and knee replacement — and two common chronic conditions — congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).  Hospitals were rated as high performing, average or below average.

‘Best Hospitals for Common Care’ is the most significant extension of the U.S. News Best Hospitals platform to date and evaluates how well hospitals perform not just with the most difficult patients, but with a wide range, and focuses on individual procedures and conditions.

VUMC was rated as high performing for heart bypass, heart failure and COPD and average for knee replacement and hip replacement.

Of the more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide that were evaluated:

• Only 8 percent were ranked as high performing for COPD;

• 11 percent were high performing for heart failure; and

• 14 percent were high performing for heart bypass.

• 82 percent of hospitals were ranked as average for knee replacement

• 81 percent of hospitals were ranked as average for hip replacement

“These scores further affirm the quality of the services we provide to our patients,” said C. Wright Pinson, MBA, M.D., deputy vice chancellor for Health Affairs and CEO of the Vanderbilt Health System. “I want to express my sincere appreciation to our faculty and staff for everything they do for our patients each day, and for these great results.”

To compile the new ratings, U.S. News evaluated hospitals across more than 25 quality measures — including mortality, readmissions, infections and patient satisfaction scores — and analyzed more than 5 million patient records, factoring in patients’ health conditions, age, sex, socioeconomic status and other factors affecting health risk.

The ratings rely on Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data for patients 65 and older, as well as data from the American Hospital Association annual survey and clinical registry data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

The Best Hospitals for Common Care rating place hospitals into one of five performance tiers, with hospitals that perform consistently well rated highest. The two highest tiers were collapsed to a single “High Performing” tier and the two lowest were collapsed to a “Below Average” tier. Approximately 800 hospitals were rated High Performing in at least one procedure or condition. Fewer than 50 hospitals were rated High Performing in all five procedures and conditions.

Pediatric hospitals were not included in this new rating.

For more information about the Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings, go to http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals.