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About this Measure
This national measure looks at the percentage of patients who die within 30 days of being in a hospital to be treated for heart failure. The measure includes deaths whether or not the death was due to heart failure.
A lower number is better for this measure.
What is a Benchmark?
Southcoast compares all of its internal quality measures against benchmarks to help gauge our performance. Benchmarks are usually an external suitable comparison group, such as a national average, or an expected target set by an external agency. When none are available, Southcoast sets its own internal performance goals.
This benchmark: This measure is calculated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services using data that is collected from all hospitals in the United States. The benchmark only includes patients who have Medicare for their health insurance program. The benchmark is risk-adjusted for the kinds of patients who go to the hospital so that hospitals that take care of sicker patients won't have worse rate just because their patients were sicker.
What Does This Mean?
The national 30-day death rate for heart failure is 11.1 percent. This rate will never be zero since the measure includes patients who died for reasons that may have had nothing to do with heart failure, such as an auto accident or other medical condition.
Southcoast's heart failure death rate is better than the U.S. national rate. In fact, Southcoast is one of 41 hospitals out of 4,807 hospitals in the U.S. whose rate is better than the national average.
What Southcoast is Doing to Improve this Measure
Southcoast cares for patients with heart failure by following national recommendations for heart failure that include:
- Giving specific discharge instructions to patients to help the patient care for their heart condition after being discharged to home.
- By order special medications known as ACE or ARB inhibitors when the left side of the heart does not work beyond a certain level.
- By evaluating the degree to which the left side of the patient's heart is effectively working.
- By offering smoking cessation counseling to patients who have smoked at any time within 12 months prior to being a patient in the hospital.
A Note About Our Data
All data on this site are aggregate data for all Southcoast Hospitals sites.
Trend for this Measure
This measure was first published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services using data from 2006. A trend report will be available for this measure when additional reports are published.
Contact Us
Quality and patient safety is extremely important to Southcoast Hospitals. Let us know whether this information is helpful or how we could better serve you.
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