Local hospitals do well in state quality report

Cape Girardeau's hospitals fared above average in providing the recommended care for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients, according to a report issued earlier this week.

The "Quality of Care" report is the first issued by the Missouri Hospitals Association and tracks how hospitals responded to patients with symptoms of heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia. The report is part of a national initiative to collect data and compare performance among hospitals.

No one is expected to take the report as the definitive answer in seeking health care, said Mary Becker, senior vice president of the Missouri Hospitals Association.

However, it does give patients a tool to use in evaluating things you would expect in patient care, she said.

The report will probably serve the hospitals more because it shows them areas where improvement is needed. "And that means the patient will ultimately benefit," Becker said.

Both Southeast Missouri Hospital and St. Francis Medical Center submitted data for the report, and both reported better-than-average scores for following the recommended care guidelines.

The entire report is available online at www.mhanet.com.

The goal is for hospitals to always follow the recommended guidelines for care and at St. Francis Medical Center, that means providing the highest level of patient care, said Dana Hukel, a hospital spokeswoman.

The information from the report was taken from medical records submitted by the hospitals that participated in the project. The data examined for this report was collected between April 1 and Sept. 30, 2003.

The report deals only with heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia because they are the most common health problems affecting the largest number of patients seen in hospitals.

Additional reports are expected in the fall, and should show levels of improvement among the reporting hospitals, Becker said.

ljohnston@semissourian.com

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