Sarasota Memorial earns city No. 1 ranking

Sarasota Memorial Hospital helped earn the city of Sarasota the title of No. 1 for lowest hospital readmission numbers, complications and deaths. 

In a study reported by BetterDoctor, an online consumer health site, Sarasota topped 31 cities that included Ashville, N.C., Chattanooga, Tenn.,  Houston, Texas and Rancho Mirage, Calif. 

Sarasota Memorial Hospital Chief Medical Officer Dr. Steve Taylor was not surprised to hear how well Sarasota placed due to initiatives through the hospital like the Congestive Heart Failure program. Features available to patients through the program include a clinic, appointment reminders and medication consultations. 

“We’ve typically done a pretty good job of keeping our readmission rates low,” Taylor said. “We’re trying to do everything we can to keep patients at home.”

Cities listed with the worst readmissions, complications and death rates were located in St. Louis, Morgantown W.Va., Peoria, Ill., La Mesa, Calif. and Miami. Information regarding readmission, complications and deaths is required to be reported from hospitals as part of the Affordable Care Act implementation.

Hospitals with excessive readmissions and mortality rates for specific serious conditions will begin to be penalized financially. 

Points of data that were included in the study were: Rate of complications for hip/knee replacement patients; Pneumonia 30-day mortality rate; death rate for stroke patients; Heart failure 30-day readmission rate. 

Hospitals within the Medicare Readmissions Complications and Deaths database were included in the report. Types of hospitals that were excluded from the list included psychiatric, rehabilitation, long-term care, children’s, cancer, critical access hospitals, and all hospitals in the state of Maryland.