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Frye recognized for heart care services
Alan Rogers | Hickory Daily Record
Frye Regional Medical Center
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Published: November 19, 2008
HICKORY - The nation's leading health-care ratings company named Frye Regional Medical Center best in the Charlotte region for overall cardiac care, cardiology and coronary intervention procedures.
HealthGrades recognized Frye for its five-star ratings in overall cardiac, treatment of heart failure and coronary interventional procedures, such as angioplasty or insertion of a coronary stent.
Michael Blackburn, Frye's chief executive officer, welcomed the recognition.
"Every day at Frye our staff and our physicians work hard to provide the best quality health care possible for the citizens of our region," Blackburn said.
"I cannot say enough to commend our physicians and hospital staff that made this award possible."
HealthGrades is a national provider of health-care ratings that compares the quality of care of 5,000 hospitals using clinical indicators.
Its findings were included in the 11th annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study, which is the most comprehensive study of its kind. The study analyzes more than 41 million Medicare hospitalization records from 2005 to 2007 at the nation's approximately 5,000 non-federal hospitals.
According to the study, if all hospitals performed at the level of five-star rated hospitals, 237,420 Medicare deaths could potentially have been prevented over the three years studied. More than half of those preventable deaths were associated with four conditions: sepsis, pneumonia, heart failure and respiratory failure.
While overall death rates declined from 2005 to 2007, the nation's best-performing hospitals were able to reduce preventable deaths at a much faster rate than poor-performing hospitals, resulting in large state, regional and hospital-to-hospital variations in the quality of patient care, the study found.
Based on the study, HealthGrades made available its 2009 quality ratings for virtually every hospital in the country at www.healthgrades.com, a Web site designed to help individuals research and compare local health-care providers.
Each hospital receives a star rating based on its patient outcomes in terms of mortality or complication rates for each procedure or treatment. Hospitals with outcomes that are above average to a statistically significant degree receive a five-star rating. Hospitals with average outcomes receive a three-star rating, and hospitals with outcomes that are below average receive a one-star rating.
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