FEATURE | Posted May 20, 2015

Rated among the nation's high performing hospitals

UC Davis Medical Center receives ratings for five common procedures and conditions

New U.S. News & World Report hospital ratings for five common procedures and conditions show that UC Davis Medical Center is a “high performer” for heart bypass surgery, hip replacements, heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and meets expected standards of care for knee replacements.

UC Davis Medical Center UC Davis Medical Center

The Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings were created to help patients find better care for procedures and medical conditions that account for a large percentage of hospitalizations each year, according to U.S. News.

“The choice of hospital is one of the most important and costly decisions an individual makes,” said Ben Harder, chief of health analysis for U.S. News. “We evaluated the treatment of more than 3.6 million patients and identified a small percentage of hospitals that have superior outcomes compared with their peer institutions. Whenever possible, patients, in consultation with their doctors, should seek out high-performing hospitals that excel in treating their specific condition.”

The ratings are based on objective outcome measures such as deaths, infections, readmissions and operations that need to be repeated, along with patient satisfaction data. The ratings also rely on Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data for patients 65 and older, as well as survey data from the American Hospital Association and clinical registry data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

“UC Davis is a leader in treating rare diseases and conditions,” said Ann Madden Rice, chief executive officer of UC Davis Medical Center. “I am extremely pleased that these new ratings also demonstrate our high performance in caring for those with the chronic lung, heart and orthopaedic conditions that affect thousands in our region.”

The common care evaluations include more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide that were rated as high performers, average or below average. Only about 10 percent of the hospitals were rated as high performers for any category or procedure.

The ratings are available at http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals.

More information about UC Davis Medical Center is available at http://medicalcenter.ucdavis.edu.