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NCH receives Healthgrades awards for neuroscience excellence

Northwest Community Healthcare was named recently by Healthgrades as one of America's 100 Best Hospitals for stroke care. NCH also is the only hospital in Illinois to receive the 2017 Healthgrades Neurosciences, Stroke Care and Cranial Neurosurgery Excellence Award.

NCH was named one of America's 100 Best Hospitals for Stroke Care for its performance in 34 of the most common inpatient procedures and conditions, as defined by Healthgrades, which evaluated nearly 4,500 hospitals across the country.

Healthgrades identified the 100 best performing hospitals across all conditions or procedures evaluated within stroke care. The findings were released today in the Healthgrades 2017 Report to the Nation.

NCH also received Healthgrades 2017 Cardiac Surgery, Cardiac Care and Pulmonary Care Excellence Awards. NCH has been named among the top five percent in the nation for GI medical treatment for a third consecutive year and is a five-star recipient in 12 conditions and procedures.

"NCH consistently meets quality measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients," CEO Steve Scogna says. "Being named among the 100 best hospitals for stroke care gives the community confidence that NCH's specially trained stroke experts can help patients in making a full recovery from stroke."

From 2013 to 2015, patients treated at hospitals that received the America's 100 Best Hospitals for Stroke Care have a 34.4 percent lower risk of dying than if they were treated in hospitals that did not receive the award. Additionally, from 2013 to 2015, patients treated at hospitals that did not receive the Neurosciences Excellence Award were, on average, 1.4 times more likely to die than if they were treated at hospitals that did receive the award.

Findings in the Healthgrades 2017 Report to the Nation demonstrate how clinical performance continues to differ dramatically between hospitals nationally, regionally and at the local level, and the impact these variations may have on health outcomes.

For example, from 2013 to 2015, if all hospitals as a group performed similarly to hospitals receiving 5-star ratings as a group, on average, 223,412 lives could potentially have been saved and 162,215 complications could potentially have been avoided, according to Healthgrades.

A 5-star rating indicates that a hospital's clinical outcomes are statistically significantly better than expected when treating the condition or performing the procedure being evaluated.

For its analysis, Healthgrades evaluated approximately 45 million Medicare inpatient records for nearly 4,500 short-term acute care hospitals nationwide, assessing hospital performance relative to each of 32 common conditions and procedures, as well as an evaluation of comparative outcomes in appendectomy and bariatric surgery using all-payer data provided by 18 states.

Healthgrades recognizes a hospital's quality achievements for cohort-specific performance, specialty area performance, and overall clinical quality. Individual procedure or condition cohorts are designated as 5-star (statistically significantly better than expected), 3-star (not statistically different from expected) and 1-star (statistically significantly worse than expected) categories.

The complete Healthgrades 2017 Report to the Nation and detailed study methodology can be found at www.healthgrades.com/quality.

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