From The Orange County Register
By Jenna Chandler / Staff Writer
Are heart attack patients given aspirin at arrival and discharge? Does a doctor promptly open a clogged artery to improve blood flow to the heart?
The major accrediting agency for U.S. hospitals says seven Orange County facilities are using these and other surefire interventions when treating heart attack patients. On Tuesday, The Joint Commission designated them among the nation’s “top performers,” a status identifying hospitals for providing excellent treatment in at least one area of care.
Orange County’s “top performers” for heart attack care include Kaiser Foundation Hospital – Anaheim, West Anaheim Medical Center, Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, Garden Grove Hospital Medical Center, Huntington Beach Hospital, La Palma Intercommunity Hospital and UC Irvine Medical Center.
An eighth Orange County hospital, Children’s Hospital of Orange County, is also on the list – for its exceptional handling of deep vein blood clots, a common complication at surgery called venous thromboembolism, or VTE.
The Joint Commission is an independent nonprofit that accredits most U.S. hospitals for Medicare funding. The Joint Commission is funded by hospitals, which pay annual fees. It awarded “top performer” status to 31 percent, or 1,043, of its accredited hospitals using data from 2014.
To earn the designation, a hospital had to meet criteria in at least one of 12 areas of care, including heart attacks, VTE, strokes, immunization, tobacco treatment and children’s asthma.
The Joint Commission selects areas for which there is evidence that specific interventions, such as prescribing aspirin for a heart attack, yield better patient outcomes, said Dr. Mark Chassin, chief executive of The Joint Commission.
“Achieving top performer status is not easy, and for many hospitals it took many years of hard work,” Chassin said.
He cautioned the status is not a reflection of the entire hospital, and that quality varies from one service to another.
“That’s why we’re very careful to specify which measures resulted in each top performer earning special recognition,” he said.
Aside from CHOC, the top performing hospitals in Orange County were recognized for heart attack care and were each recognized as a top performer in at least three other service areas.
Rankings by government agencies, consumer groups and for-profit companies, some of which charge, are an increasingly popular marketing tool for hospitals that achieve high ratings.
“There is a lot of noise out there in the hospital quality measurement field. We encourage hospitals to tune out the noise and focus on measures that are most important to their patient populations,” Chassin said.
Contact the writer: jchandler@ocregister.com or on Twitter: @jennakchandler
