Sherman among nation's high performing hospitals for heart failure, COPD

Elgin, Ill. - Advocate Sherman Hospital has been rated high performing for heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings.

Sherman Hospital has specialty clinics serving patients with heart failure and respiratory diseases, including COPD. Nurse navigators work one-on-one with those patients in coordination with their physicians to help them better manage their own health and reduce the risk for complications and unnecessary hospitalizations.

"We are proud to be recognized by U.S. News for the high-quality care and patient experience we provide our community," says Linda Deering, hospital president. "We have been especially focused on our patients with heart failure and COPD through our Heart Failure Recovery Clinic and Respiratory Care Clinic."

U.S. News evaluated hospitals in five procedures and medical conditions - heart bypass surgery, hip replacement, knee replacement, heart failure and COPD - and rated them as high performers, average or below average. Only about 10 percent of the hospitals were rated as high performers.

"The choice of hospital is one of the most important and costly decisions an individual makes," said Ben Harder, chief of health analysis for U.S. News. "We evaluated the treatment of more than 3.6 million patients and identified a small percentage of hospitals that have superior outcomes compared with their peer institutions. Whenever possible, patients, in consultation with their doctors, should seek out high performing hospitals that excel in treating their specific condition."

The ratings evaluate more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide.

"This recognition affirms the progress we have made with these high-risk populations," says Deering.

U.S. News created Best Hospitals for Common Care to help patients find better care for the kinds of common procedures and medical conditions that account for millions of hospitalizations each year. Objective outcome measures such as deaths, infections, readmissions and operations that need to be repeated, as well as patient satisfaction data, largely determined the ratings. The Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings rely on Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data for patients 65 and older, as well as survey data from the American Hospital Association and clinical registry data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

Dr Foster, an international health care analytics company with expertise on claims-based risk adjustment, collaborated with U.S. News on the Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings methodology.

The ratings are available at health.usnews.com/best-hospitals.