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Hospital
Information reveals regional dominance in certain procedure
categories
by
Robert Powell
Virginia Business
January
2005
Numbers
can tell a story, especially when they are compared
to one another. The numbers provided by Virginia Health
Information reveal which hospitals are the dominant
institutions in their regions for various health care
procedures.
Inova
Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, for example, discharged
3,457 patients last year after they received invasive
cardiology treatment. Invasive cardiology is a category
that includes cardiac catheterization and the placement
of cardiac pacemakers. Inova Fairfax’s numbers
represented more than two-thirds of the invasive cardiology
discharges for its region, the Virginia suburbs of Washington,
D.C. In fact, Inova Fairfax was the leading hospital
in that region in all eight service categories surveyed
by Virginia Health Information for Virginia Business.
The Inova Fairfax story is just one of the many trends
revealed in the information compiled by Virginia Health
Information, an independent, nonprofit health information
organization. VHI has collected detailed information
about the treatment of patients from hospitals around
the state since 1993. Today the organization collects
data from 90 hospitals treating 860,000 patients. The
information is grouped in about 40 procedure categories,
or service lines. VHI also gathers information from
health maintenance organizations, ambulatory surgical
centers and long-term care providers including nursing
homes, assisted living centers, home care agencies,
continuing care retirement communities, adult day-care
centers and group homes.
Virginia Business began publishing a sample of VHI’s
hospital data last year. This year’s report includes
information on eight service lines: medical cardiology,
invasive cardiology, gastroenterology, oncology, orthopedic
surgery, pulmonary, urological surgery and vascular
surgery. The report shows the number of patients treated
at each hospital after undergoing procedures in these
categories. The report also compares those hospital
figures to the total number of patients treated under
each category in the region.
No other hospital in the report showed the regional
dominance of Inova Fairfax over all eight categories.
Some hospitals, however, accounted for high percentages
of regional totals in one or more service lines. For
example, the 2,852 patients discharged by Sentara Norfolk
General Hospital following invasive cardiology procedures
last year represented 38.2 percent of the patients treated
in that category in the eastern region, which includes
Hampton Roads. The hospital also accounted for 31.05
percent of the urological surgeries in the region.
Likewise, Carilion Medical Center in Roanoke performed
44.25 percent of the invasive cardiology procedures
and 45.4 percent of the vascular surgery procedures
in the state’s southwest region. In the northwest
region, Winchester Medical Center accounted for 41.15
percent of the area’s invasive cardiology procedures
while University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville
performed 39.5 percent of oncology procedures.
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Business - January 2005 |
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