Residents of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin can rest easy when admitted to the region’s hospitals.  According to the HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study, the hospitals in this, the East North Central region, are the best in the nation.  More than just a pleasant stay is at stake, however.  The chances of dying in a hospital are 70% lower in the best hospitals than in those ranked lowest.

HealthGrades, Inc., the premier independent healthcare rating organization in the US, evaluates the nation’s hospitals each year and assigns either 5 stars (best), 3, or 1 star (lowest) based on 17 procedures and conditions.  According to its most recent (its 11th) analysis, the deaths of as many as 237,420 Medicare patients may have been prevented in the past three years if all hospitals performed at the same level of quality as the 5-star hospitals do.

The rate of death during hospitalization dropped from 2005 to 2007 but wide disparities in quality of care were still noted.  HealthGrades used records of more than 41 million Medicare patients who were hospitalized in the nation’s 5,000 hospitals during those years.

The October 16 analysis revealed:

• The death rate dropped an overall average of 14.17% between 2005 to 2007 for all US hospitals combined, with per-hospital rates ranging from 6.30% to 20.94%.
• The mortality rate at 5-star hospitals improved the most (13.18%), followed by the 3-star hospitals (13.14%) and 12.30% improvement in the 1-star hospitals.
• More than half (54%) of deaths thought to be potentially preventable involved just four medical conditions – heart failure, respiratory failure, pneumonia, and sepsis, a very serious systemic response to infection.
• Mortality rates were lowest in the East North Central region and highest in the East South Central region, composed of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
• The region with the highest number of hospital facilities earning a 5-star rating was the East North Central region, with 26% of its hospitals earning the highest rank while only 7% of the hospitals in the New England region (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont) did so.

This year’s analysis marks the first time the report identified 15 large metropolitan regions in addition to the 50 states and the District of Columbia.  These metropolitan areas are Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Riverside-Inland Empire (California), San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC.  Full reports on area hospitals are available by state and metropolitan region.

Samantha Collier, MD, chief medical officer for HealthGrades, urges anyone expecting hospitalization to review the latest report and know the ranking of any hospital under consideration whenever possible.  Saying “geography should not be a major factor” in patient care, the risk remains until the level of health care equalizes across the nation as a whole.