U.S. News & World Report Names Bryan Medical Center Among Nation’s High Performing Hospitals

Bryan Medical Center has been rated high performing in hip replacement, knee replacement, heart bypass surgery, congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings.

The ratings evaluate more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide on common inpatient procedures and conditions. More than 700 hospitals earned highest rankings in at least one procedure or condition, but only 34 were high performing in all five areas, and Bryan Medical Center was one of the 34.

“We’re honored to receive another national recognition, this one from the widely circulated and respected U.S. News & World Report,” said John Woodrich, president and chief operating office, Bryan Medical Center. “It signifies the work our skilled doctors, nurses, therapists and all our staff preform every day to earn the trust of patients throughout Nebraska and its neighboring states.”

U.S. News evaluated hospitals in five procedures and medical conditions – heart bypass surgery, hip replacement, knee replacement, heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) – and rated them high performers, average or below average. Only about 10 percent of the hospitals were rated as high performers.

“The choice of hospital is one of the most important and costly decisions an individual makes,” said Ben Harder, chief of health analysis for U.S. News. “We evaluated the treatment of more than 3.6 million patients and identified a small percentage of hospitals that have superior outcomes compared with their peer institutions. Whenever possible, patients, in consultation with their doctors, should seek out high performing hospitals that excel in treating their specific condition.”

U.S. News created Best Hospitals for Common Care to help patients find better care for the kinds of common procedures and medical conditions that account for millions of hospitalizations each year. Objective outcome measures such as deaths, infections, readmissions, and operations that need to be repeated as well as patient satisfaction data largely determined the ratings. The Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings rely on Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data for patients 65 and older, as well as survey data from the American Hospital Association and clinical registry data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

Dr. Foster, an international health care analytics company with expertise on claims-based risk adjustment, collaborated with U.S. News on the Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings methodology.

The ratings are freely available at: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2015/05/20/40-hospitals-that-performed-well-in-common-care