GSMC News – GOOD SHEPHERD RECOGNIZED WITH TOP HONORS BY HEALTHGRADES

Good Shepherd Health System is pleased to announce its ranking among the top 5 percent of all hospitals nationally for overall Orthopaedic Care and among the top 10 percent of all hospitals nationally for Cardiology Services, Spine Surgery and General Surgery, according to a comprehensive study released by HealthGrades, the nation’s leading healthcare ratings company. Accordingly, Good Shepherd Medical Center is a recipient of Specialty Excellence Awards for Coronary Intervention, Orthopaedic Surgery, Spine Surgery and General Surgery.

According to the 2009 HealthGrades’ ratings, Good Shepherd Medical Center also received five-star ratings for clinical excellence in a number of key areas including: treatment of heart attack and heart failure, joint replacement, hip fracture repair, treatment of stroke, treatment of pneumonia and treatment of respiratory failure.

“These awards indicate Good Shepherd’s ongoing commitment to serving our community with the highest quality of care. The Medical Center’s dedicated staff is solely responsible for the ongoing achievements that rank us among the leading providers of health care,” said Ed Banos, President and CEO of Good Shepherd Health System.

These findings were included in the eleventh annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study, which analyzed more than 41 million Medicare hospitalization records from 2005 to 2007 at the nation’s approximately 5,000 non-federal hospitals. Also according to the study, patients treated at the nation’s top-rated hospitals have a 70 percent lower chance of dying compared with the lowest-rated hospitals across 17 common procedures and conditions, ranging from heart attack and pneumonia care to respiratory failure.

While overall death rates declined from 2005 to 2007, the nation’s best-performing hospitals were able to reduce preventable deaths at a much faster rate than poor-performing hospitals, resulting in large state, regional and hospital-to-hospital variations in the quality of patient care, the study found.