Healthgrades Announces 2022 Analysis of Top Specialty Care Hospitals

Health grades published its Healthgrades Ratings and Specialty Excellence Awards 2022. The reviews rate hospital performance on 31 of the most common procedures and diseases. The awards recognize outstanding clinical performance in 17 specialist areas and include a new category for total surgical care. This list of all award winners is available here.

As part of its analysis, Healthgrades has also published The Healthgrades Specialty Excellence Report 2022: The Enduring Importance of Quality, which provides in-depth review and data analysis to show how Americans can use quality ratings to find better specialty care. The report also includes findings from the ongoing Healthgrade’s COVID-19 Patient Confidence Study.

“Every American should use this information to help decide where to go for specialist treatment,” said Brad Bowman, MD, chief medical officer and head of data science for Healthgrades. “Healthgrades also gives hospitals the tools to understand how well they are doing compared to other local, regional, and national hospitals – and make improvements accordingly.”

Quality data for objective measurements of excellence

The 2022 Healthgrades Specialty Excellence Awards recognize hospitals that achieve excellent patient outcomes in the most common hospital procedures and conditions, including surgical care, critical care, cardiac care and surgery, gastrointestinal care and surgery, bariatric surgery, and 10 other specialties. Full methodology is available here.

? The awards take into account Medicare patient data from 2018-2020 (excluding patients diagnosed with COVID-19).

? Healthgrades independently analyzes every short-term acute hospital in the country – around 4,500 hospitals. Hospitals cannot subscribe or unsubscribe from the analysis.

? Ratings are determined by actual clinical performance, including patient mortality or hospital complications. The ratings and awards do not take into account the hospital’s reputation, financial information, perception, or predicted performance.

? Healthgrades uses a risk-adjusted statistical model so that hospitals with sicker patient populations are rated based on their unique patient mix.

Patients fare much better in high-performance hospitals

The results of the Healthgrades analysis have some terrifying implications. For example from 2018-2020:

? The risk of complications with knee replacement surgery is 74.0% lower in a hospital with a 5-star rating than in a hospital with a 1-star rating *

? Patients treated in hospitals with 1-star for hospital mortality for a heart attack are on average 2 times more likely to die than if they were treated in hospitals with 5-star for hospital mortality. *

? If all hospitals had performed as well as the 5-star rated hospitals, a potentially 218,141 lives could have been saved and 156,050 health complications could have been avoided *

All rating information will be published on healthgrades.comwhich indicates which hospitals receive 1, 3 or 5 stars for each of the rated specialties. Patients can view hospital profiles to see how hospitals compare to other local options.

“Hospital quality assessments should be transparent and easily accessible so that all Americans can make the most informed decisions about where to receive care,” said Brad Graner, president of Healthgrades. “Many people are not aware that there are significant differences in quality between hospitals. Healthgrades is leading the way in making hospital quality information transparent and accessible so that all Americans can make the most informed decisions about where to receive treatment. “

Three-quarters of Americans surveyed feel very comfortable participating in medical activities

Despite pandemic-induced loss of confidence in activities such as air travel and attending large public events, 76% of Americans are comfortable with health-related activities such as visiting their GP, going to an emergency facility, and having medical procedures in the office, noisy Healthgrade’s COVID-19 Patient Confidence Study. The study also found that:

? Most patients have not changed the frequency of their doctor visits, ~ 70% say the frequency of their doctor visits has either increased or stayed the same since the pandemic started.

? A majority of Americans – 60% – say the quality of care is more important to them now than it was before the pandemic began.

To learn more, read the Healthgrades 2022 Specialty Excellence Report here.

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