Boulder City Hospital

Archive for November, 2009

It appears that for heart attack patients, the rating by U.S. News & World Report may be justified. A new study published in the July edition of Archives of Internal Medicine found that patients treated at hospitals ranked by U.S. News & World Report are less likely to die 30 days after being admitted than those at an unranked hospital. The study also found that ranked hospitals were more likely to have lower than expected overall death rates.

The study, performed at Yale University Medical School, assessed the thirty-day mortality rate among 13,000 patients, admitted to 50 US News and World Report’s “Best in Heart and Heart Surgery, ” and among 250,000 patients admitted to 3,800 non-ranked hospitals. After factoring in patient characteristics, the 30-day mortality rate was slightly lower in ranked hospitals, at 16% vs. 18%. However, when they divided the hospitals into groups based upon these rates, 70% of the ranked hospitals were in the group with the least deaths, and only 8% were in the group with the most deaths.

When they examined hospitals based on overall mortality rate (not just at 30 days) 11 ranked hospitals and 28 unranked hospitals had mortality rates of less than 1%. The authors of the study wrote, “the U.S. News & World Report ranking list does not include many hospitals that have outstanding performances for the care of patients with acute myocardial infarction [heart attack].”

In the United States, each state has its own laws and boards to ensure that the medical services and hospitals are up to standard. The hospitals in Illinois are not left out. They offer highly spoken of services. There are various types of hospitals across the state.

There are those big city hospitals in Illinois that are equipped with the latest technology and highly trained staff. These are found in cities such as Chicago and Springfield.  These big hospitals also serve as referral hospitals for the hospitals that are found in rural Illinois. In rural Illinois, you can go for miles without seeing people, so that definitely also applies to hospitals. Because of this, the rural hospital staff will usually just prepare the patients for transfer to bigger and better equipped hospitals in the city.

Some of the hospitals in Illinois are what is known as teaching hospitals. These are hospitals that are equipped with the latest technology and medical students come here to learn as they treat the patients. These are great for those students who intend to specialize in different fields, as most of the doctors who are experts in their fields are found in teaching hospitals.

In the teaching hospitals in Illinois, you find state of the art research labs that are used to further medical research and offer some cutting edge treatment for rare medical conditions.

You will also find hospitals in Illinois that handle just infectious diseases, and provide quarantine facilities, and where the staff is trained to handle such cases. Some of the medical facilities in Illinois are designed to cater for seriously ill or terminally ill patients. Some hospitals in Illinois offer hospice services for these individuals. With so many choices, all patients are bound to find a hospital in Illinois that will cater to their individual needs.