Allen Hospital Receives Specialty Excellence Award from Leading Healthcare Independent Ratings Organization

HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings organization, ranks Allen Hospital No. 1 in Iowa for overall cardiac services for 2011; No. 1 in Iowa for cardiology services in 2011, and No. 1 in Iowa for coronary interventional procedures in 2011. Allen Hospital has also been designated a recipient of the HealthGrades Coronary Intervention Excellence Award™ four consecutive years, 2008 - 2011. To view a list of additional Allen HealthGrades rankings, click here .

The 2011 ratings are based on an October 2010 HealthGrades study. In the study, Allen Hospital is the only Iowa hospital rankedamong the top 5 percent of hospitals in the nation for Coronary Interventional Procedures and is the only Iowa hospital ranked in the top 10 percent in the nation for Cardiology Services.

Nearly 5,000 American hospitals were included in this sweeping study, which examined mortality rates and complication rates from government data from 2007, 2008 and 2009.

The Thirteenth Annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America study, the largest annual report of its kind, analyzed patient outcomes from nearly 40 million Medicare hospitalization records over a three-year period.

HealthGrades’ hospital ratings are the leading objective, actionable quality measures based solely on clinical performance made available to the public.

Top-performing hospitals had dramatically lower mortality rates than other hospitals, according to the study. For the 17 procedures and diagnoses for which HealthGrades analyzed mortality rates, patients at top hospitals had a 72 percent lower chance of dying when compared with the lowest-performing hospitals, and a 53 percent lower chance of dying when compared to the U.S. national average.

In addition to Allen’s HealthGrades achievements, the hospital achieved several significant milestones:

The new Allen Heart and Vascular Center opened in March 2009, offering cardiology, electrophysiology, open-heart surgery and cardiac rehabilitation in one building.

Allen earned the American College of Cardiology Foundation’s Gold Performance Achievement Award for 2010, one of only 135 hospitals nationwide so recognized.

Allen reached an aggressive goal of treating coronary artery disease patients with 85 percent compliance to core standard levels of care outlined by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association clinical guidelines and recommendations.

In April 2010, Allen received full Cycle-III accreditation for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) from the Society of Chest Pain Centers. Allen is one of just five accredited chest pain centers in Iowa.

HealthGrades Hospital Quality Ratings

HealthGrades rates hospitals independently based on data that hospitals submit to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. No hospital can opt in or out of being rated, and no hospital pays to be rated.

For 26 procedures and medical treatments, HealthGrades issues star ratings that reflect the mortality and complication rates for each category of care. Hospitals receiving a 5-star rating have mortality or complication rates that are below the national average, to a statistically significant degree. A 3-star rating means the hospital performs as expected. One-star ratings indicate the hospital’s mortality or complication rates in that procedure or treatment are statistically higher than average. Because the risk profiles of patient populations at hospitals are not alike, HealthGrades risk-adjusts the data to allow for equal comparisons.

More information on today’s HealthGrades study, including the complete methodology, can be found at www.healthgrades.com.

About Allen Hospital

Allen Hospital is a not-for-profit, 204-bed acute-care community hospital located in Waterloo, Iowa. It serves a 12-county area of the Cedar Valley. Allen Hospital also provides ambulatory surgery, imaging, laboratory services and urgent care at United Medical Park in Waterloo, Iowa, and Prairie Medical Park in Cedar Falls, Iowa.