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Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute – Texas Medical Center Named Among Nation's 100 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals

Houston, Texas, November 14, 2005 – Just one year after its introduction, the Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute – Texas Medical Center, located within Memorial Hermann Hospital, became the only Houston healthcare facility named one of the nation’s 100 top cardiovascular hospitals. The designation was awarded through the 2005 Solucient® 100 Top Hospitals: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success study. The results appeared in Modern Healthcare magazine.

Solucient, which maintains the country’s largest healthcare database, compiles the list by objectively measuring performance on key criteria at the nation’s top acute-care hospitals. The company studies medical record information and cost data reported to Medicare for approximately 12 million patient discharges a year.

“When we established the Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute on our campus last year, we dedicated a new management team to our cardiovascular service line and focused on performance improvement,” said Juanita Romans, CEO of Memorial Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center. “Our Medicare statistics prove the success of these measures, and we are honored to be included in the company of such respected teaching institutions as Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and Beth Israel Deaconness.”

The study focuses on hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of cardiology patients, including patients with heart attack, congestive heart failure, coronary angioplasty and coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Solucient scored facilities on seven key performance areas: risk adjusted medical and surgical mortality, complications, procedure volume, percentage of bypass patients for which internal mammary arteries were used, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and severity adjusted average cost.
Memorial Hermann Hospital, which houses the Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute – Texas Medical Center, was one of 40 teaching hospitals with cardiovascular residency programs to be recognized. It is the primary teaching hospital for The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

Solucient’s study estimated that 10,000 more heart patients nationally would survive each year and 1,100 fewer complications would occur if all of the hospitals studied provided the same quality of care as the 100 top facilities.

The study also documented significant differences between the 100 top cardiovascular hospitals and the other 662 peer institutions studied:

Survival rates at benchmark hospitals were 14.7 percent better for heart attack patients, 25.5 percent better for congestive heart failure patients, and 22 percent better for bypass and angioplasty patients.
Benchmark hospitals reported fewer infections and less postoperative hemorrhaging.
Average patient stay was 4.53 days in benchmark hospitals, compared to 5.08 days for others. Costs were lower as well.
Benchmark hospitals performed more angioplasties and bypass procedures than their peers.

A new, six-story, 165,000-square-foot structure is being built at the corner of MacGregor and Fannin to house the Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute – Texas Medical Center. When it opens in early 2007, the $57 million facility will house six cardiac catheterization and electrophysiology labs and 116 patient rooms.

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