Mortality and readmission data has been available on the CMS hospitalcompare.hhs.gov website. Now MHMC is reporting this information on www.mhmc.info. The mortality and readmissions data currently reported represents data calculated from Medicare data on patients discharged from hospitals between July 1, 2005 and June 30, 2008. It does not include people in Medicare Advantage Plans (like an HMO or PPO) or people who don’t have Medicare.

Mortality and Readmissions will be rated differently than the other measures on www.mhmc.info. Hospitals that performed better than the national average on outcomes measures will earn a “Special Recognition” and be identified as “Best.”

About Mortality and Readmission Rates:

The new “Special Recognition” tells you how Maine hospitals are performing in select “outcome measures.” Outcome measures show what happened after patients with heart failure, heart attack, or pneumonia received hospital care. Two outcome measures are used:

1. Mortality or Death Rates: Indicates if patients with heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia died from any cause within 30 days of their hospitalization.

2. Readmission Rate: Indicates the percentage of patients with heart attack, heart failure, or pneumonia who were hospitalized again within 30 days. A hospital can reduce its readmission rate by preventing complications, teaching patients how to care for themselves when they leave the hospital, and making sure patients have a smooth transition to their home or another setting, such as a nursing home.

Special Note:

Special Recognition is calculated using data based on deaths and readmissions taken from Medicare billing records. The measures are “risk adjusted,” meaning they take into account how sick patients were before they were admitted to the hospital. The mortality (death) rate includes patients that die within 30 days of going into a hospital no matter what the cause. For example, if a patient goes to a hospital for pneumonia, leaves five days later, and then seven days later dies from a car crash, the death is still counted against the hospital to which they were admitted for pneumonia.

What “Best” Means:

“Best” means that the hospital had a death rate and/or a readmission rate for heart attack, heart failure, or pneumonia that was significantly better than the national rate, thus positioning them as some of the “best” performers in that category out of the over 4,600 hospitals reporting. Hospitals that are better than the national rate, or “best,” are worthy of special recognition.

If a hospital does not earn Special Recognition, it means that the hospital was not one of the top performers in the country in mortality or readmissions. This does not mean that the hospital performed badly, but hospitals that are better than the national rate, or “best,” are worthy of special recognition.

To learn more about what the rates are based on, visit www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.