Top hospital heart failure performance translates to longer survival

ORLANDO – Hospitals in the first quartile of short-term performance in treating heart failure patients had higher long-term survival rates for those patients, based on data from 317 hospitals that participated in a voluntary quality improvement program.

The burden of heart failure remains substantial in the United States, and health policies are increasingly focused on improving care for heart failure patients, said Ambarish Pandey, MD, of the University of Texas, Dallas, in a presentation at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.

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As the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services incentives increasingly favor preventing hospital readmission in heart failure patients, a different performance metric is needed, Dr. Pandey said.

The researchers assessed hospital performance based on 30-day risk-standardized mortality rates (RSMR) in hospitals participating in the Get With the Guidelines–Heart Failure (GWTG-HF) registry, using a hierarchical, logistic regression model to calculate hospital-specific 30-day RSMRs.