Section C examines the performance of hospitals that provide heart care. This section includes:

• Section C-1: Nonsurgical heart cases

• Section C-2: Coronary artery bypass grafts (CABG) - Whole state

• Section C-3: Valve repairs - Whole state

• Public Health Data

Length of stay and mortality rates are measured for all cardiac patients. Nonsurgical heart cases include patients who were admitted for angina, heart failure and shock, and acute myocardial infarctions (heart attacks), but did not need heart surgery. Because open-heart surgery is performed at relatively few hospitals, not all hospitals will have reports in the CABG and valve repair sections.

Mortality Rates and Quality of Care

Experts in outcome measurement have strong reservations about using severity-adjusted mortality rates as an absolute gauge of the quality of care provided by a hospital, because many other factors also must be considered. Mortality is just one indicator of how a hospital performs. It cannot be used as the main measure of the overall quality of care provided by a hospital.

Average Length of Stay

An expected range best represents the average time a patient needs to stay in the hospital. This table shows whether a hospital's average length of stay is within the range expected in a hospital with the same type of patient population. Length of stay is considered an indirect indicator of efficiency. Conclusions about efficiency cannot be based solely on length of stay.