For the second year in a row, Butler Memorial Hospital was named one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals for cardiovascular care by Thomson Reuters.

The annual study — 2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success — examined 970 hospitals by analyzing clinical outcomes for patients with heart failure and heart attacks and for those who received coronary bypass surgery and angioplasties.

The 2008 winners were announced in Modern Healthcare magazine in November.

"These hospitals provide enormous value to their communities because heart disease is still the nation's number one killer. They have set the new national standard for cardiovascular disease outcomes, process of care, efficiency, and lower costs," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs at Thomson Reuters.

The study, in its 10th year, found that the 100 Top Hospitals cardiovascular award winners, as a group, performed 63 percent more bypass surgeries and 42 percent more angioplasties than peer hospitals. This might suggest that bypass surgery is increasingly done in centers of excellence.

While the average mortality rate for cardiovascular patients is low, at 3.4 percent, the mortality rate for bypass surgery was 26 percent lower in the 100 Top Hospitals cardiovascular winners.

The award-winning hospitals demonstrated higher performance on the evidence-based core measures published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Thomson Reuters researchers analyzed data from a variety of sources. Hospitals were scored in key performance areas: risk-adjusted medical mortality, risk-adjusted surgical mortality, risk-adjusted complications, core measures score, percentage of coronary bypass patients with internal mammary artery use, procedure volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and wage and severity-adjusted average cost.

"Butler Memorial Hospital is honored to be recognized for the second year in a row with this prestigious award," said Ken DeFurio, president and CEO. "This award, along with our continued investment in the Heart and Vascular Center of Butler Memorial Hospital, reflects our commitment to providing world-class health care to the community."

This article was submitted by Butler Memorial Hospital.