PINC AI™ and Fortune Name the Nation’s 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™

Charlotte, NC (February 15, 2024) ─ PINC AI™, the technology and services brand of Premier, Inc. (NASDAQ: PINC), today announced the nation’s 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™. The full list of recognized hospitals was published in an exclusive online article by Fortune.

To create the list, an objective, quantitative analysis of publicly available data was conducted to identify the top cardiovascular hospitals in the United States. The primary purpose of the PINC AI™ 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ program is to inspire hospital and health system leaders to pursue higher performance and deliver added value to patients and communities. Organizations do not apply to participate in the study, and award winners do not pay to market their honor.

The Performance of Facilities on the PINC AI™ 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ Program List

This year, based on comparisons between the study’s top performers and a peer group of similar hospitals, the analysis found that the 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ delivered better outcomes while operating more efficiently and at a lower cost. Compared to their peers, this year’s top performers 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.

Compared to peer hospitals, those in the 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ operated at lower cost and had better outcomes, recording significantly higher inpatient survival rates, fewer patients with complications, lower readmission rates and up to nearly $10,000 less in total costs per patient case.

These outcomes add up to meaningful differences. According to the study’s analysis, if all hospitals operated at the level of this year’s top performers, there could be 7,600 fewer deaths due to heart disease, 6,700 fewer bypass and angioplasty patients who suffer complications, and more than $1 billion in inpatient costs could have been saved for the 2024 study year.

This analysis is based on Medicare patients included in this study. If the same standards were applied to all inpatients, the impact could have been even greater.

“Heart disease is one of America’s leading causes of death, resulting in nearly 695,000 deaths and $239 billion in added costs each year,” said Leigh Anderson, Premier’s Chief Operating Officer and leader of PINC AI™. “As hospitals work to improve the quality and value of cardiovascular care, unbiased and objective data is vital to enhance patient care as well as financial and operational improvements. The PINC AI™ 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals™ program helps set performance standards for hospitals across the country, creating aspirational benchmarks for all to strive to achieve.”

Methodology for the Rankings

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.

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).