Patient mortality risk up to 70% lower at top hospitals

New research suggests that an in-patient at a top-rated hospital is a staggering 70% less likely to die than an in-patient at a low-rated hospital.

Results of the 11th Annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study found that overall mortality rates dropped by 14.7%, on average, between 2005 and 2007. However, further analysis revealed that the better-performing hospitals had reduced their mortality rate at a much faster rate than poorly-performing hospitals. The disparity was so great that a patient in a 5-star rated hospital was 70% less likely to die than a patient in a 1-star rated hospital, or 50% less likely to die than an in-patient in an average American hospital.

Samantha Collier, MD, HealthGrades' chief medical officer and one of the authors of the study, said: author. "It is imperative that anyone seeking medical care at a hospital do their homework and know the hospital's quality ratings before they check in."

The study also found that if all hospitals had the same standard of care as that of a 5-star rated hospital, 237,420 Medicare deaths could potentially have been prevented over the three-year study period. 54% of those potentially-preventable deaths were associated with just four conditions: sepsis, pneumonia, heart failure, and respiratory failure.

News release: Death rate 70% lower at nation's top-rated hospitals: HealthGrades 11th Annual Hospital Quality Study. HealthGrades. October 14th 2008.