EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a two-part series.
PORT ANGELES – How can you do so many things right and still come out so wrong?
Olympic Medical Center is trying to answer the question in the wake of a national study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services whose findings were released in June.
It has no easy answer.
In a measure of deaths among Medicare patients within 30 days of admission for congestive heart failure, OMC fell into a group of 35 hospitals out of 4,807 nationwide with mortality rates worse than the national rate of 11 percent.
It was the only one in Washington in that doleful category.
Anomalies about the results include OMC’s long-standing pride in its cardiac care program.
More striking, though, is that the CMS study also noted that OMC performs important “core measures” for heart-failure patients that exceed averages for hospitals in this state and across the country.
CMS’s follow-up advice to the hospital basically tells OMC to do more of what it already does well:
Provide patients with adequate instructions when they leave the hospital, administer medications proven effective against congestive heart failure, and measure how well a diseased heart is working.
