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Brownsville,Texas—Brownsville and Harlingen hospitals repeatedly rank above national and state averages for treatment of heart conditions, according to a newly updated government Web site that allows patients to compare hospitals.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Hospital Compare is an online tool that compares the quality of medical care for four conditions at hospitals throughout the nation: heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care.
It measures various procedures for each condition, for example the number of heart failure patients who receive discharge instructions. These instructions are important since the information helps patients manage their symptoms when they get home, according to the Web site.
Statewide, only six in 10 of these patients were given discharge instructions. However, locally more than nine in 10 patients received this vital information.
But for certain conditions, some local hospitals reported widely different statistics. While Harlingen Medical Center reported giving beta blockers to 100 percent of its heart attack patients when they arrived at the hospital, only 79 percent received the same medicine at Valley Regional Medical Center. Beta blockers are used to “lower blood pressure, treat chest pain … and heart failure, and to help prevent a heart attack,” according to the HHS Web site.
Robin Brechot, community health director at VRMC, says changes are under way at the hospital to bring raise that figure.
“We’ve made significant changes with education of our staff. We are now giving these at arrival instead of at discharge as we did before,” she said.
All data on the Web site is shown in percentages calculated by the hospitals’ inpatient records. All records were given voluntarily and provide information from October 2005 to September 2006.
In pneumonia cases, all major area facilities rank below the national average in regards to the percentage of patients given vaccinations during hospitalization. While seven in 10 pneumonia patients receive a flu vaccine at hospitals nationally, only about two in 10 do at VRMC, and three in 10 do at Valley Baptist Medical Center-Brownsville.
“Our second quarter results (April-June 2007) show us at 100 percent as far as giving flu shots,” Brechot said. “Once patients come in, we’re assessing them and giving them the required vaccinations.”
To compare how local hospitals stack up to one another, and to state and national averages, visit the HHS Web site, www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov
The Brownsville Herald
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