BOSTON - WANT to survive a heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia? Go to a busy hospital.
Researchers reported on Wednesday that patients suffering from the three common health problems were less likely to die when treated in hospitals that frequently handle those illnesses.
Pneumonia patients treated at larger-volume hospitals were 5 per cent less likely to die in the first month than patients treated at hospitals that handled few cases. The death rate for heart failure was 9 per cent lower for busy hospitals and 11 per cent lower for heart attacks.
Dr. Joseph Ross of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and colleagues studied Medicare claim data from 2004 through 2006 for their study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. They found that once a hospital annually treated 610 patients for a heart attack, 500 for heart failure or 210 for pneumonia, patients had the lowest risk of dying, at least during the first 30 days.
Teaching hospitals generally needed fewer patients to attain a lower risk of death, they discovered. 'There are small-volume hospitals that are doing well, and large volume hospitals that aren't,' Dr. Ross said in a telephone interview. But in general, hospitals that treat the fewest patients were the riskiest.
'Clearly our small-volume hospitals need to be lifted up a bit,' Dr. Ross said. One solution may be to help them do things the way larger-volume facilities do, so their success rates will improve. Previous studies have shown that patients who receive surgery or other procedures do better if they are treated by doctors with the most experience. -- REUTERS
No comments:
Post a Comment