United Hospital selected as one of the top 100 cardiovascular centers in the nation

ST. PAUL, Minn. 04/17/2007--

“Solucient® honors hospitals that are setting benchmark levels of performance throughout the nation”

United Hospital has been named one of the nation's 100 top cardiovascular hospitals by Evanston, Ill.-based Solucient®. The "2006 Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success" study appears in the Nov. 6, 2006, edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.

As the nation's leading source of information products for the health care industry, Solucient provides tools and vital insights that health care managers use to improve the performance of their organizations. Solucient's expertise and proven solutions enable providers, payers and pharmaceutical companies to drive business growth, manage costs and deliver high quality care.

Among key findings

If peer hospitals (non-winners) provided the same quality of cardiovascular care as the 100 Top Hospitals facilities, survival rates could increase by more than 8,000 patients each year.
Complications of care could also decrease in peer hospitals. Approximately 575 additional patients could be complication-free.
The average 100 Top Hospitals Cardiovascular winner meets the recommended core measures standards for 95 percent of its heart attack (acute myocardial infarction or AMI) patients, compared with 93 percent at the average peer, or non-winning, hospital. Similar differences were seen for congestive heart failure (CHF) patients. Core measures — a set of widely accepted minimum standards of care for all patients, based on scientific evidence — are used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and approved by the National Quality Forum.
Both medical and surgical cardiovascular patients experience markedly higher survival rates at winning hospitals. For example, winning hospitals had 21 percent fewer deaths than expected for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) patients while peer hospitals had only 1 percent fewer deaths than expected.
Winning hospitals performed up to 80 percent more percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) than their peers, and about 50 percent more CABGs. Previous research has shown that procedure volume is a critical factor in outcomes for cardiovascular patients.
Benchmark hospitals are proving more efficient in treating cardiovascular patients. The average 100 Top Hospitals Cardiovascular winner discharges patients half a day earlier and at an average cost that is about 13 percent less than its peers.

The eighth edition of the "Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success" study analyzed acute-care hospitals nationwide using detailed empirical performance data from publicly available Medicare MedPAR data and Medicare cost reports. The measures were calculated for three classes of hospitals with the following number of winners in each:

Teaching with cardiovascular residency programs - 30 winners.
Teaching without Cardiovascular Residency Programs - 40 winners.
Community - 30 winners.

Solucient scored facilities in eight key performance areas: risk-adjusted medical mortality, risk-adjusted surgical mortality, risk-adjusted complications, core measures score, percentage of CABG patients with internal mammary artery use, procedure volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay and wage- and severity-adjusted average cost. For more information on this study and other Top 100 hospitals, visit Solucient's Web site. Copies of the 100 Top Hospitals report can be purchased by calling Solucient® at 1-800-568-3282 or on line.

About United Hospital

United Hospital, the largest hospital in the Twin Cities east metro area, is a non-profit hospital providing a full range of health care services to more than 200,000 people each year. United offers a wide range of health services including a birth center, cardiac care in the Nasseff Heart Center, emergency care, oncology, orthopedics, neurosciences and epilepsy, a pain center, rehabilitation, medical imaging and surgery.

About Allina Hospitals & Clinics

Allina Hospitals & Clinics is a not-for-profit system of hospitals, clinics and other health care services, providing care throughout Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Allina owns and operates 11 hospitals, 65 clinics, home care and hospice services, oxygen and equipment, pharmacies, and emergency medical transportation services. Allina Hospitals & Clinics and the latest health information can be found online at www.allina.com.

# # #