How Does Your Hospital Stack Up Against The Competition? Now We Can Tell You.

Last week, USA Today got acces to federal statistics on hospital care to give consumers a yardstick to judge them by.

That article has a lot of good information about how hard it's been to get useful information out of the medical industry. 

The government is comparing the death rates in 3 categories.

Health experts say those are the best indicators of how your hospital is doing.

So I ran our hospitals through their formula and here is what I got.

Bare in mind, this is just a snapshot for 2007.  The percentages do rise and fall each year.

First we compare the death rates by Heart Attack. 

Remember, the lower the percentage, the better.

You expect the big city hospitals to do better, and in fact, Memorial does top the list.

But the surprise is how low Erlanger and Parkridge placed.  Both saw spikes in their heart attack fatalities last year.  In 2006, Erlanger placed 6th and Parkridge was in the middle of the pack.

Gordon also went from top to bottom in just one year.

I'm impressed that rural hospitals like Fannin, Southern Tennessee & Grandview are near the top.

Now we compare the rates of Death from Heart Failure.

Chattanooga hospitals again lag down the list.

North Georgia's largest (Hutcheson & Hamilton Medical) place higher.

Athens Regional places near the bottom, but that's still a major improvement from 2006 stats which placed it one of the worst in the country for Heart Failure death.  Their numbers improved by 4 percent in 2007.

And finally, death rates for Pneumonia.

The shocker here is that one of our largest hospitals in the area, Hamilton Medical in Dalton, placed last.

So how do the hospitals stack up against each other in just these 3 categories?

Among Chattanooga's 3, it's close, but here are the rankings:

1.  Memorial

2.  Erlanger

3.  Parkridge

We throw in the other suburban hospitals, and you get:

1.  Memorial

2.  Erlanger (tied)

     Hutcheson (tied)

4.  Hamilton Medical

5.  Parkridge (tied)

6.  Skyridge (tied)

The surprise here is how well Hutcheson in Ft. Oglethorpe stacks up (a comfort since this is the closest hospital to my house!)

And finally, comparing how the rural hospitals fare:

1.  Fannin (Blue Ridge)

2.  Murray (Chatsworth)

3.  Southern Tennessee (Winchester)

4.  Copper Basin (tied)

     Murphy (tied)

6.  Grandview (Jasper)

7.  Gordon (Calhoun, GA)

8.  Sweetwater

9.  Rhea (Dayton)

     North Georgia (Ellijay)

     Woods (Etowah)

12. Athens

13. Highlands (Scottsboro)

14. DeKalb (Ft. Payne)

Are mountain folk just tougher?  4 out of the top five rural hospitals are in or around the mountains!

So, should any of these rankings change your hospital plans?  I don't know.  But I do like getting some objective numbers out of the mysterious world that is medicine.

Thanks USA Today!