Two Intermountain Health Hospitals Ranked for Top Heart Care
Two Intermountain Health hospitals have been named Top 50 heart hospitals in the nation for 2024 by Fortune Magazine.
Intermountain McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden and Intermountain Medical Center in Murray are ranked as two of the nation’s Top 50 Cardiovascular Hospitals for 2024 by Fortune and Pinc AI, which evaluates heart hospitals annually to determine facilities that are excelling in providing high quality, affordable heart care.
The Fortune and Pinc AI rankings including teaching hospitals with and without cardiovascular residency programs, along with community hospitals.
This year’s rankings examined 940 hospitals in the United States and assessed their performance based on metrics including clinical outcomes (inpatient deaths and complications, as well as readmission and 30-day mortality rates), operational efficiency (average length of cost and stay), and overall patient experience.
This is the fourth consecutive year that Intermountain Medical Center has been named to the Fortune Top 50 list, and the first year for Intermountain McKay-Dee Hospital.
“This is a terrific honor to have our efforts to provide the highest-quality heart care to our patients be recognized by Fortune Magazine,” said Eric Lindley, MD, medical director of the cardiovascular program at Intermountain McKay-Dee Hospital. “Our goal is to provide the very best heart care to our patients close to home here in Northern Utah. We’re proud to have those efforts recognized nationally. That’s a credit to our entire team.”
“We’re thrilled to once again be recognized as one of premier heart hospitals in the nation,” said Stephen McKellar, MD, medical director for the cardiovascular program at Intermountain Medical Center. “Our focus is to provide the very best care and treatment options for our patients. The fact that two of our Intermountain hospitals are ranked among the Top 50 hospitals in the nation is a real honor and speaks to our commitment to our patients.”
The rankings focus on short-term, acute care, nonfederal hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of cardiology patients. Hospitals must provide all levels of cardiovascular care, including open heart surgery, to be included in the study.
According to the authors of the study, compared to peer hospitals, those in the 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals operated at lower cost and had better outcomes, recording significantly higher inpatient survival rates, fewer patients with complications, lower readmission rates and up to nearly $10,000 less in total costs per patient case.
These outcomes add up to meaningful differences.
According to the study’s analysis, if all hospitals operated at the level of this year’s top performers, there could be 7,600 fewer deaths due to heart disease, 6,700 fewer bypass and angioplasty patients who suffer complications, and more than $1 billion in inpatient costs could have been saved for the 2024 study year.
This analysis is based on Medicare patients included in this study. If the same standards were applied to all inpatients, the impact could have been even greater.