“Quality patient care is a top priority,” said Michele C. Meyer, the hospital’s chief executive officer. “We are honored to receive this designation, which validates the efforts our physicians, nurses and staff make to deliver quality, personal cardiac care to our patients every day. We are pleased to measure favorably against nationally recognized quality and cost efficiency benchmarks for the outstanding cardiac care we provide to our patients.”

The UnitedHealth Premium designation program for cardiac care identifies hospitals and specialists nationwide that are leaders in providing cardiac care. Hospitals are invited to apply for designation.

“Patients who require cardiac care need to know that they are getting quality treatment “said Lewis Sandy, M.D., an internist and executive vice president of clinical strategies at UnitedHealthcare. “Our goal is to enhance the overall quality of care for our customers and enrollees. The UnitedHealth Premium designation signals to all consumers that Des Peres Hospital meets or exceeds nationally recognized standards of care.”


UnitedHealthcare has a long history of using evidence-based, expert physician-derived measures to evaluate claims and office-based data to assess physician and hospital performance. The UnitedHealth Premium designation program is a key component of a dynamic and integrated portfolio of performance assessment activities that are continuously and consistently updated based on expert physician input and practicing physician’s operational experience.

Criteria for selecting UnitedHealth Premium designated cardiac specialty centers were developed with input from a panel of nationally recognized independent cardiology experts and based on published guidelines set by the American College of Cardiology, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the Heart Rhythm Society and Leapfrog Group, a coalition of more than 150 public and private organizations that provide health care benefits.

“The UnitedHealth Premium program evaluates and recognizes specific hospital and physician capabilities,” said Dr. Sandy. “These capabilities include their quality processes, adherence to evidence-based approaches, compliance with nationally recognized guidelines published by clinical societies and their broad capabilities to handle cardiac illness and its treatment through a continuum of stages.”

Among the program’s criteria:

• Breadth of Care – Hospital offers a full range of cardiac care including diagnostic procedures, cardiac surgeries, interventional procedures and electrophysiology capabilities.
• Depth of Care – Hospitals must track volumes of cardiac procedures for diagnostic catherizations, PCI procedures, EP studies and EP ablations, cardiac rhythm management device implants and open-heart surgeries.
• Staff Experience – Cath Lab directors have advanced training and/or minimum number of years of experience. There must also be dedicated units for cardiovascular surgery patients or intensivists for ICUs, 8 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Emergency Care – Hospitals must track ER treatment times for PTCA and thrombolytics for ST elevated MI patients; hospitals must also have cardiologists, thoracic surgeons and cardiac cath lab staff available within 30 minutes or less for emergency care.
• Quality and Data Management – Hospitals must track morbidity and mortality for all interventional and open-heart surgery procedures and CABG procedures. Hospitals must also submit outcomes data to the American College of Cardiology and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.
  
  

The program also measures hospital efficiency by analyzing the aggregate cost of care at an individual patient level for a complete treatment episode. Costs include related physician diagnostic testing, inpatient procedures and follow-up care. Each episode of care cost is compared to the expected or “average” cost for caring for a similar episode in that hospital’s local area based upon UnitedHealthcare claims data.

The UnitedHealth Premium program will conduct an annual review of Des Peres Hospital’s performance against the independently created criteria.

 
“Consistently measuring up to each of these standards requires a fundamental commitment to excellence in cardiac care as well as to outstanding delivery of service to patients,” said Ms. Meyer. “We look forward to continuing to demonstrate our commitment.”