Dr. Terry Neill, Medical Director of Sacred Heart Regional Stroke Center, and Dr. Jeffrey Lord, Medical Director of Sacred Heart Surgical Weight Loss Center, accepting the HealthGrade awards.

PENSACOLA, Fla. --(May 24, 2010) HealthGrades, the nation’s leading independent healthcare ratings organization, has named Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola as the recipient of HealthGrades 2009/2010 Bariatric Surgery Excellence Award™  and the Stroke Care Excellence Award™ for the second consecutive year.

The HealthGrades awards place Sacred Heart’s Stroke Center and its Center for Surgical Weight Loss in the top 10 percent of stroke and bariatric surgery programs nationwide. HealthGrades also rates Sacred Heart’s bariatric surgery center as Best in the Pensacola-Tallahassee Region.

HealthGrades independently rates the quality of care for virtually all of the nation’s nearly 5,000 non-federal hospitals based on information about patient outcomes that hospitals report to the federal government. The HealthGrades web site provides a report card based on an analysis of mortality and complication rates related to twenty-eight procedures and health conditions, including stroke and bariatric surgery.  No hospital can opt in or out of being rated, and no hospital pays to be rated.

“Our outstanding Stroke Center team and remarkable weight loss surgery team have both been recognized as among the best in the country,“ said Laura Kaiser, president and CEO of Sacred Heart Health System. “The collective effort over the past five years has made it possible to achieve and maintain a very high level of care. These independent, comparative ratings are clear evidence that their dedication has meant better outcomes for the people who matter most – our patients.”

For 28 procedures and treatments, HealthGrades issues star ratings that reflect the mortality and complication rates for each category of care. Hospitals receiving a 5-star rating have mortality or complication rates that are below the national average, to a statistically significant degree. A 3-star rating means the hospital performs as expected. One-star ratings indicate the hospital’s mortality or complication rates in that procedure or treatment are statistically higher than average.

In HealthGrades ratings for 2010, Sacred Heart Hospital received a five-star rating in 10 different areas. Those were:

• Stroke Care (2008-2010)

• Bariatric surgery (2009 and 2010))

• Treatment of heart failure (2009 and 2010)

• Treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (2010)

• Treatment of respiratory failure (2010)

• Treatment of pneumonia ((2010)

• Hip fracture repair (2009 and 2010)

• Gastrointestinal procedures (2009 and 2010)

• Treatment of sepsis – (bloodstream infection) (2009 and 2010)

• Appendectomy (2010)

“Over the past several years, we have put intense focus on patient safety and quality improvements at our hospital and we’re proud of our rankings in these areas,” Kaiser said. “Thanks to a lot of hard work by our physicians and staff, we’re providing superior care in 10 patient care categories and we’re pushing to become a five-star hospital across all services.”

According to the twelfth annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America study, top-rated hospitals had a 52 percent lower mortality rate than the U.S. national average when looking at the patient outcomes of 17 procedures and diagnoses.

The study identified Sacred Heart Hospital as one of 88 hospitals identified as a “top” performer for bariatric surgery, with mortality rates, complication rates and patient lengths of stay that are dramatically lower than poorly rated hospitals.

“Competition among bariatric surgery programs grows stiffer every year as more programs open. It is critical for patients to carefully evaluate the quality of the hospital where they will have their surgery,” said Rick May, MD, a senior physician consultant with HealthGrades and a co-author of the study. “Hospitals designated as five-star for bariatric surgery are obviously doing things differently to obtain the high quality patient outcomes they are getting.”
HealthGrades’ 2010 ratings represent data from the years 2006 through 2008, the most current information available. The ratings are available at www.healthgrades.com.

About the Sacred Heart Center for Surgical Weight Loss (http://www.sacred-heart.org/weightloss)
Sacred Heart’s Center for Surgical Weight Loss provides a full range of bariatric surgical services, including inpatient care, post-operative care, follow-up and patient education. The medical director of the Center is Dr. Jeffrey Lord, a nationally recognized expert in the field of minimally invasive bariatric surgery. He is skilled in performing laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery and adjustable gastric banding or lap band surgery. For more information, call 416-1628 or visit online at http://www.sacred-heart.org/weightloss/.

About the Sacred Heart Stroke Center (http://www.sacred-heart.org/strokecenter/)
Sacred Heart Regional Stroke Center aims to provide faster, more effective care that improves outcomes and reduce death and disability from stroke. Based in the Emergency/Trauma Center at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, the Regional Stroke Center is under the direction of Dr. Terry Neill, a board-certified vascular and critical care neurologist.  The Sacred Heart Regional Stroke Center provides expert care provided by a team of neurologists, neurosurgeons, interventional radiologists, emergency medicine physicians, radiologists, and nurses with special training in stroke care.