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McAllen Heart Hospital Made History Again, Rated #1 in Texas

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009


Pictured above from L-R: Elmer Esguerra, MHH Director of PCCU; Lisa Killion, STHS Asst. Administrator of Marketing and PR; Mike Adams, MHH Interim Chief Operations Officer; Filiberto Rodriguez-Salinas, MD Cardiothoracic Surgeon; Libby Smith, MHH Director of Nursing; Joanne McGrew, Nurse Practitioner; Todd King, MHH Director of PACU and Cesar Rodriguez, MHH Executive Representative. Photo by Roberto Hugo Gonzalez Mega Metropolis Health & Fitness

SPECIAL REPORT

For Cardiac Care and Cardiac Surgery

By Roberto Hugo Gonzalez

            There is a national company called Health Grades that studies the performance of over 5,000 hospital facilities. Each year, this company gathers the performance data across the nation and releases its conclusion of what it calls the hospital report card. For many hospitals across the nation, this report card becomes bad news; but this is not the case for McAllen Heart Hospital.

Health Grades analyzed data of last year and selected McAllen Heart Hospital as the number one hospital in the state of Texas for Overall Cardiac Care and also for Cardiac surgery. In addition to this, Health Grades, Inc. (Nasdaq: HGRD) also recognizes McAllen Heart Hospital as being in the top five percent in the nation for Overall Cardiac Care and Cardiac Surgery in 2010.

The hospital is the recipient of the Specialty Excellence Award for Overall Cardiac Care for a third year in a row and also McAllen Heart Hospital has been ranked among the Top ten percent in the nation for Cardiac Surgery for 7 years in a row.

McAllen and South Texas had been fortunate in many medical fields, but one that is outstanding is the cardiovascular surgery field. For more than twenty-five years cardiovascular surgery has been provided in the Valley, and Dr. Filiberto Rodriguez has been there all the way. “Dr. Filiberto Rodriguez has been one of our largest driving forces to the accomplishments of McAllen Heart Hospital,” Mike Adams MHH Interim Chief of Operations told Mega Metropolis Health & Fitness.

Mr. Adams hit the nail right on the head; Dr. Rodriguez has been one of the most dedicated thoracic surgeons of this area for twenty-six years. His patients love him and Mega Metropolis Health & Fitness can attest to that. As a matter of fact, Joe Karam, one of his patients approached publisher Roberto Hugo Gonzalez and said, “I would like to tell my story. I was operated on by Dr. Rodriguez 22 years ago; I was 44 years of age”, he said. “Thanks to God and to the dedication and efficiency of Dr. Rodriguez I am still here, and I feel fine,” he finalized.

            There are many patients living happy lives just like Mr. Karam, all over Texas, the U. S. and Mexico as Dr. Rodriguez has performed more than 10,000 heart surgeries while he has been in McAllen. “The positive outcomes in mortality have been going on for twenty-six years; I can assure you that mortality has been below 2 percent”, Dr. Rodriguez told Mega Metropolis Health & Fitness.

The HealthGrades study, the largest annual report of its kind, analyzed patient outcomes in nearly 40 million Medicare hospitalization records from 5,000 hospitals over the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. The new 2010 HealthGrades hospital ratings were posted on the HealthGrades Web site at www.healthgrades.com.

This year’s study found:

  • Across all 17 procedures and diagnoses in which mortality was studied, there was an approximate 72 percent lower chance of dying in a 5-star rated hospital compared to a 1-star rated hospital, and a 52 percent lower chance of dying in a 5-star hospital compared with the national average.
  • If all hospitals performed at the level of a 5-star rated hospital across the 17 procedures and diagnoses studied, 224,537 Medicare lives could potentially have been saved from 2006 through 2008.

“The findings of this study reaffirm South Texas Health System’s commitment to provide superior quality cardiovascular services for people of the Rio Grande Valley,” said Douglas Matney, South Texas Health System Vice President for Acute Division and Group Vice President. “Through innovation, advanced technology and visionary leadership, we have positioned McAllen Heart Hospital as the region’s cardiovascular healthcare leader,” he finalized.

 

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