Web site rates local hospitals

If you suffered from a heart attack, stroke or any other life threatening condition wouldn’t you like to be treated in the best hospital around? Now it’s easier than ever to find out which hospitals have the best facilities to treat your specific condition.

Health Grades Chief Medical Officer Dr. Samantha Collier said, “There was a big improvement around some of the life threatening illnesses that require ICU care all across North Carolina. [The state] had the most improvement compared to most states in the US.”

Each year Health Grades analyzes the death rates and complication rates for virtually every hospital in the country.

“New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington also preformed well. They had a five-star rating for joint replacement surgery and [were] top ten percent in the nation for overall orthopedics.”

New Hanover Regional Medical Center takes pride in its success, but doctors on staff say they will never stop striving for a higher level of achievement.

“Improvement is a never-ending process and we’re constantly listening to what our families are telling us, what our quality indicators are showing us, what our physicians and staff are telling us. And based on that is how we make improvements.”

Dr. Collier says the quality differences between a one- and five-star hospital could mean life or death.

“The top hospitals have about a 70 percent lower mortality or death rate compared to the bottom or one-star hospitals so that translates into 266,000 Medicare deaths that may have been prevented.”

The bottom line: do your research before you are treated.

NHRMC Orthopedic Program Director David Oehler said, “Understand you will find variations of hospital care, not all hospitals are top performers and not all hospitals are good in everything so you need to understand that before you check in.”

Health Grades comes up with the ratings by analyzing and comparing 40 million Medicare hospitalization discharge records. The ratings are updated every year.

You can find the scores for free on www.healthgrades.com.