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Rogue Valley Medical keeps the beat Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Quintuple bypass surgery allows Ernie Garb, of Medford, to enjoy life in his garden. Rogue Valley Medical Center, where Garb had surgery, was recently named one of the top 100 cardiac-care hospitals in the United States. RVMC voted as one of top 100 hospitals for heart care By Bill Kettler Ernie Garb wasn�t surprised when Rogue Valley Medical Center won honors as one of the United States� top 100 hospitals for cardiac care. The 68-year-old Medford man remembers clean rooms, friendly nurses and doctors who took time to talk with him when he had quintuple bypass surgery at RVMC just over a year ago. "When I hit the call button, somebody actually came," says Garb, who lived in New York until he retired to Medford four years ago. "In New York, you can wait 30 minutes after you hit the call button for someone to show up." Health-care analysts looked at more weighty factors than the things Garb remembered when they sought out the top 100 cardiac-care hospitals in the United States. HCIA-Sachs, a Baltimore consulting firm, considered cardiac patients� length of hospital stay, the rate of post-surgical complications, and surgery costs to determine which hospitals did the best work. Just two other Oregon hospitals scored in the top 100: Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital & Medical Center, and Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, both in Portland. HCIA-Sachs published the results recently in "One Hundred Top Hospitals: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success." Hospitals across the United States will use the results to improve their performance. Researchers noted that if all hospitals performed at the level of the top 100, deaths from cardiovascular surgery would drop about 15 percent; cardiac patients� hospital stays would decrease by half a day; and hospital costs nationwide would drop by $250 million. Cardiovascular disease kills more Americans than any other single cause of death and accounts for nearly 300,000 Medicare hospitalizations annually. Cardiology services consume about 15 percent of what patients spend on hospital care. The study is more than a beauty contest to pick the best-performing hospitals, said Robert Herbert, who analyzed the data for HCIA-Sachs. "What makes it worth doing is to set benchmarks for success," Herbert says. "It shows what�s obtainable. "Hospitals will look at what (the top performers) do and decide how they can do things better." HCIA-Sachs looked at Medicare records from three kinds of cardiac procedures during 1997 and 1998. To be considered for the study, a hospital had to admit in both years at least 30 heart-attack patients, 50 patients for coronary artery bypass surgery, and 50 angioplasty patients. (Angioplasty involves inserting a balloon in blocked arteries to open them.) More than 5,000 hospitals provided data, but only 707 met the admissions criteria. Ashland Community Hospital and Providence Medford Medical Center were not evaluated in the study because they do not perform cardiac surgery. RVMC�s national recognition should give local people some satisfaction, says Medford cardiac surgeon Dr. David Folsom. "We�re all extremely demanding about the way things are done. If we find something we�re not satisfied with, we�ll address it. If we see a little blip in infections, say, we�ll get together with the department of infectious diseases and look at everything we do." RVMC�s post-operative care won praise from Keith Gordon, a Brookings man who traveled to Medford in February for six-way bypass surgery. Gordon enrolled in a 12-week cardiac rehabilitation program after surgery. "You do a lot of walking and a lot of huffin� and puffin� but the whole crew is great," he said. "I started feeling like my old self again, and I even felt better than I did before." On the Net: To see the report visit HCIA-Sachs site at: www.100tophospitals.com Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA