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St. Mary’s Medical Center ranked among the top 5% in the nation for overall orthopedic services and for joint replacement by a new study released today by HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings organization. The HealthGrades study evaluates objective patient outcomes in the nation’s 5,000 hospitals.

This is the third consecutive year that St. Mary’s Medical Center ranked among the top 5% in the nation for overall orthopedic services and joint replacement. St. Mary’s has earned the 2010 HealthGrades Orthopedic Surgery Excellence Award™ and the Joint Replacement Excellence Award™ for its orthopedic care. In addition, the hospital’s orthopedic program received the highest five-star ratings from HealthGrades for joint replacement, total knee replacement, total hip replacement, hip fracture repair and spinal fusion in the study.

Athena Olszyk has seen these outstanding clinical results after having hip replacement surgery at St. Mary’s Medical Center. “I could hardly walk without pain medication, let alone get down on the floor to play with my children. My orthopedic surgeon at St. Mary’s encouraged me to get a hip replacement as I knew I didn’t want to live the rest of my life like this,” Olszyk, a mother of two, said.

St. Mary’s team of nationally renowned orthopedic specialists performed a minimally invasive procedure that restored Athena’s mobility in three weeks. “Everyone at St. Mary’s took such great care of me. Now, I can do more than I did as a teenager,” Olszyk said.

Jeff Ashin, St. Mary’s Medical Center CEO, said that St. Mary’s Medical Center orthopedic program is distinguished by its compassion, experience and excellence. “From discovery to recovery, patients can trust St. Mary’s doctors, nurses and support staff to provide outstanding patient care using the latest in medical technology.”

Ashin also thanked the surgeons with the Knoxville Orthopaedic Clinic for leading the effort for outstanding clinical outcomes at St. Mary’s. “The KOC surgeons perform thousands of surgical procedures each year at St. Mary’s. I want to salute their commitment to quality and innovation in orthopedic surgery each day at St. Mary’s. Without their leadership, this award would not have been possible,” Ashin added.

The HealthGrades study, the largest annual report of its kind, analyzed patient outcomes in nearly 40 million Medicare hospitalization records from 5,000 hospitals over the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. Among the findings related to inhospital complications in this year’s study are:
• Across all procedures in which complications were studied, there was a 79.69% lower chance of experiencing one or more inhospital complications in a 5-star rated hospital compared to a 1-star rated hospital.
• Across all procedures studied, there was a 61.22% lower chance of experiencing one or more inhospital complications in a 5-star rated hospital compared to the U.S. hospital average.
• If all hospitals performed at the level of a 5-star rated hospital, 110,687 orthopedic inhospital complications may have been avoided among Medicare patients over the three years studied.

The new 2010 HealthGrades hospital ratings were posted today at www.healthgrades.com, HealthGrades’ public Web site.

St. Mary’s Medical Center is a member of Mercy Health Partners. Mercy was formed by the merger of St. Mary’s Health System and Baptist Health System of East Tennessee in 2008. The new healthcare system operates seven acute-care hospitals and twenty other healthcare facilities across East Tennessee. More than 1,000 of the area’s leading physicians are on the active staff at Mercy facilities. One of East Tennessee’s largest employers, Mercy has 5,700 associates dedicated to providing compassionate care using the latest medical technology.

For physician referral and service information, please call one of Mercy’s referral lines: Ask Mercy at 632-5200 (toll-free at 877-368-7362) or Mercy Wellnesse for Women at 877-599-WELL (9355). A complete list of Mercy physicians, facilities, services and extensive health information is available online at www.mercy.com.

HealthGrades Ratings
HealthGrades’ hospital ratings and awards reflect the track record of patient outcomes at hospitals in the form of mortality and complication rates. HealthGrades rates hospitals independently based on data that hospitals submit to the federal government. No hospital can opt in or out of being rated, and no hospital pays to be rated.

For 28 procedures and treatments, HealthGrades issues star ratings that reflect the mortality and complication rates for each category of care. Hospitals receiving a 5-star rating have mortality or complication rates that are below the national average, to a statistically significant degree. A 3-star rating means the hospital performs as expected. One-star ratings indicate the hospital’s mortality or complication rates in that procedure or treatment are statistically higher than average. Because the risk profiles of patient populations at hospitals are not alike, HealthGrades risk-adjusts the data to allow for apples-to-apples comparisons.

More information on today’s HealthGrades study, including the complete methodology, can be found at www.healthgrades.com.


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