In 2015, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons—the professional group that represents surgeons who operate on the chest and heart—launched a voluntary public reporting program for congenital heart surgery, making it possible to find high-performing hospitals. Now, 117 hospitals across the U.S. that perform surgery to treat congenital heart surgery have submitted data to STS, and 50 have agreed to share that information with Consumer Reports, making them the first such ratings of hospitals that perform pediatric heart surgery. To rate a hospital, statisticians compare the percentage of its patients who die in the hospital or within 30 days of discharge, after adjusting for the difficulty of the patients’ cases, as determined by the types of procedures that were performed and how sick patients were at the time of surgery. Of the 50 pediatric hospitals that shared their data with Consumer Reports, eight received the highest possible rating, one the lowest score, and the rest fell in between.
Read more: http://www.consumerreports.org/children-s-health/top-hospitals-for-congenital-heart-disease/