U.S. News & World Report rates Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire as High Performing in heart failure

Mayo Clinic hospitals in Rochester and Phoenix earn top tier in all five Common Care categories

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. — Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, earned a top-tier High Performing distinction in heart failure in U.S. News & World Report ratings announced Wednesday, May 20. Mayo Clinic hospitals in Rochester, Minnesota, and Phoenix, Arizona, earned the High Performing distinction in all five common care categories.

U.S. News Best Hospitals for Common Care evaluated how well more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide performed on routine individual procedures and conditions. The five areas of focus are heart bypass surgery, hip replacement, knee replacement, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart failure. Only about 10 percent of the hospitals were rated as high performers in any category.

Mayo Clinic hospitals in Rochester and Phoenix are among fewer than 50 of more than 800 institutions that rated High Performing in all five categories. Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, earned the High Performing rating in hip replacement.

The ratings placed hospitals into one of five performance tiers, with hospitals that performed consistently well rated highest. The two highest tiers were collapsed to a single High Performing tier, and the two lowest were collapsed to a Below Average tier. About 800 hospitals were rated High Performing in at least one procedure or condition.

“This honor recognizes the efforts of our team approach to chronic heart failure, which helps patients avoid hospital admissions and maintain their quality of life,” says cardiologist Richard Hanna, M.D., who has been involved with the Heart Failure Clinic at Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire since 1997.

U.S. News created Best Hospitals for Common Care to help patients find better care for the kinds of common procedures and conditions that account for millions of hospitalizations each year. Objective outcome measures, such as deaths, infections, readmissions and operations that need to be repeated, as well as patient satisfaction data, largely determined the ratings. The Best Hospitals for Common Care ratings rely on Centers for Medicare & 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.

Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire was ranked No. 6 in Wisconsin and No. 1 in northwestern Wisconsin in the 2014-15 U.S. News & World Report annual America’s Best Hospitals list. High performing categories include:

Mayo Clinic Rochester was rated No. 1 nationwide on the U.S. News Best Hospitals Honor Roll for 2014-15. U.S. News & World Report is one of many ranking groups that recognize Mayo Clinic as a top choice for patients. Other distinctions from national assessment organizations include the UHC Quality Leadership Award, Leapfrog Top Hospitals, Leapfrog Hospital Safety, Nursing Magnet Status and Consumer Reports Hospital Safety.

Mayo Clinic is highly ranked for quality more often than any other academic medical center in the nation. These endorsements reinforce Mayo Clinic’s century-old commitment to provide the highest quality care to each patient every day. While no single set of measures can perfectly represent health care quality, Mayo Clinic is proud to be recognized by so many.

“Quality patient care is really everyone’s business at Mayo Clinic, and we’re grateful that external recognitions such as this recognize our quality and ongoing commitment to patients every day,” Paula J. Santrach, M.D., chair of the Mayo Clinic Quality Care Subcommittee, says of the new Common Cares ranking.

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Mayo Clinic Health System consists of clinics, hospitals and other health care facilities that serve the needs of people in more than 60 communities in Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The community-based providers, paired with the resources and expertise of Mayo Clinic, enable patients in the region to receive the highest-quality health care close to home.

About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to medical research and education, and providing expert, whole-person care to everyone who needs healing. For more information, visit mayoclinic.org/about-mayo-clinic and newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org.