PINC AI™ 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ Program Study Highlights Key Areas for Improved Cardiovascular Performance*

Key takeaways:

• Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States.1
• The PINC AI™ 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ program study reveals top performing hospitals had up to 50 percent fewer deaths and 38 percent fewer patients with complications associated with coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and up to nearly $10,000 less in total costs per patient case.
• According to the study, if all hospitals performed as well as the 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™, 7,600 additional lives and more than $1 billion could have been saved in-hospital for the 2024 study year.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the U.S. and accounts for a large portion of overall U.S. healthcare spending.1 The number of patients with CVD is rising and set to accelerate as the population ages. These facts have prompted hospitals, health systems and cardiologists to seek ways to reduce costs and improve CVD care for the patients and communities they serve.

Annually, since 1999, the 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ program has conducted a quantitative study that highlights the nation’s top-performing hospitals in cardiovascular care, showcasing the highest achievements on a balanced scorecard. The actionable insights generated from the study help hospitals direct resources towards maintaining and improving high-quality CVD care.

The 2024 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™

The 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ program aligns with the PINC AI™ 100 Top Hospitals® Program and existing PINC AI™ solutions. The program’s goal is to inspire hospital and health system leaders to strive for higher performance and provide added value to patients, communities and payers.

The 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ are being honored for outcomes, efficiency and patient satisfaction based on publicly available, national, unbiased data. The top hospitals have proven to consistently achieve top performance, set industry benchmarks and deliver healthcare value. This year’s study selected 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ from 940 individual facilities studied.

PINC AI™ 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ Study Findings

The study revealed differences between top performing hospitals and their peers, where the benchmark hospitals had:

• 28 percent fewer acute myocardial infarction (AMI) deaths and 50 percent fewer coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) deaths.
• 32 percent fewer percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) and 38 percent fewer CABG patients with complications.
• Higher 30-day survival rates for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure (HF) and CABG patients (0.3 to 0.7 percentage points higher).
• Lower 30-day readmission rates for AMI, HF and CABG patients (0.4 to 0.8 percentage points lower).
• Shorter average lengths of stay between patient groups – 0.3 for AMI, 0.6 for HF, 0.3 for PCI and one full day for CABG.
• $2,503 to $9,931 less in total costs per patient case (the smallest dollar-amount difference was for HF and the largest was for CABG).
• Patients had a better experience at top performing hospitals compared to the remaining peer hospitals, with a top-box Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) score of 71 percent versus 67 percent.

The study projections also indicate that if the benchmarks of performance established by this year’s top hospitals were achieved by all U.S. hospitals, then for the 2024 study year:

• More than 7,600 additional lives could have been saved.
• More than 6,700 heart patients could have been complication free.
• More than $1 billion in hospital inpatient costs could have been saved.

The analysis is based on applying the difference between top performing hospitals compared to peer hospitals for Medicare patient counts. If the same standards were applied to all inpatients, the impact could be even greater.

Leveraging PINC AI™ Data and Insights to Improve Cardiovascular Care

Recognition as one of the 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ demonstrates an ongoing commitment to prioritized leadership, clinical excellence and patient-centered care. All hospitals, whether a 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospital™ or not, need actionable data and performance indicators to identify areas for improvement in clinical, operational and financial performance without sacrificing patient experience.

The PINC AI™ 100 Top Hospitals™ program provides all hospitals with their risk, wage and severity-adjusted data compared to a cohort of their peers for the study year as well as a five-year comparative trend. This data adds context and depth to a hospitals’ performance information, allowing them to pinpoint and prioritize improvement efforts.

This data, coupled with innovative PINC AI™ solutions, can help hospitals improve performance by:

• Supporting clinical efficiency: PINC AI™ Clinical Intelligence helps hospitals and health systems turn evidence into action with analytics and benchmarking on clinical performance through AI-enabled clinical surveillance and decision support.
  
• Improving margins: PINC AI™ Collaboratives, Consulting and other solutions can help guide hospital and health systems with a data-driven approach to identifying and executing evidence-based practices for sustainable change in financial performance, supply chain resiliency and workforce management.
  
• Supporting quality reporting: PINC AI™ Quality Improvement solutions can help hospitals and health systems satisfy reporting and comply with national program requirements like the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Hospital Electronic Clinical Quality Measures (eCQMs) to name a few.

Achieving High-Value Cardiovascular Care

Hospitals and health systems strive to provide high-value care across medical services and maintain patient satisfaction at a reduced cost.

In an era of heightened consumerism in healthcare, achieving top performance in quality and safety can help set a hospital apart from the competition – and earn the trust and loyalty of its patients.

A top designation can affirm a hospitals’ efforts in quality improvement and prove their merit to those who entrust them with their lives.

Hospitals working to achieve a top designation can start by accessing their data derived from the 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ study. Understanding cardiovascular care strengths and opportunities highlighted in the report allows hospital leaders to focus on what matters most – providing high-quality, cost-effective patient care.

Connect with the PINC AI™ team to review your data and identify areas for improvement.

Study Methodology

The PINC AI™ 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ program focuses on short-term, acute care, nonfederal U.S. hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of cardiology patients. It includes patients requiring medical management, as well as those who receive invasive or surgical procedures. Because multiple measures are used, a hospital must provide all forms of cardiovascular care, including open heart surgery, to be included in the study. Each patient group is mutually exclusive by design.

Eligible hospitals are ranked for performance across four measurement grouping areas.

The study relies on transparent, publicly available data from Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MEDPAR), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Care Compare, Medicare cost reports, Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) patient satisfaction scores and other data to select hospitals who consistently deliver cardiovascular care value to patients, communities and payers.

Final rank is determined based on performance for all individual measures. Hospitals are ranked within three separate peer groups: teaching hospitals with cardiovascular residency programs (20 top performing facilities), teaching hospitals without cardiovascular residency programs (20 top performing facilities) and community hospitals (10 top performing facilities).

References:

1. Kochanek, K.D., 2014. Mortality in the United States, 2013 (No. 178). US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.

For more on this topic:

• Download the complete PINC AI™ 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ program study.
• Learn how the PINC AI™ 100 Top Hospitals® program can assist your hospital or health system in quality improvement, benchmarking and strategy development.

The insights you need to stay ahead in healthcare: Subscribe to Premier’s Power Rankings newsletter and get our experts’ original content delivered to your inbox once a month.