Our 2022 Cardiac Outcomes Recognized During American Heart Month

In honor of American Heart Month spotlights the importance of heart health and the lifestyle changes important to limiting risk. However, should you need heart care, Los Angeles Community Hospital has been nationally recognized with 5 Stars for Heart Attack and Heart Failure Treatment in 2022, according to new research released by Healthgrades, a leading resource that connects consumers, physicians and health systems. Every year, Healthgrades evaluates hospital performance at nearly 4,500 hospitals nationwide for 31 of the most common inpatient procedures and conditions.*

“As February is American Heart Month, knowing that our hospitals are nationally recognized for cardiac treatment outcomes for heart attack and heart failure should be comforting to the communities we serve in East LA and Norwalk,” said the hospital’s CEO Hector Hernandez.

This analysis shows that patients treated at hospitals receiving a 5-star rating have a lower risk of mortality and a lower risk of experiencing one or more complications during a hospital stay than if they were treated at hospitals receiving a 1-star rating in that procedure or condition. From 2018 through 2020, if all hospitals as a group performed similarly to hospitals receiving 5-stars as a group, on average, 218,141 lives could potentially have been saved, and complications in 156,050 patients could potentially have been avoided.*

“Consumers are increasingly becoming aware of the differences of care provided by different hospitals,” said Dr. Brad Bowman, Healthgrades’ chief medical officer and head of data science. “Consumers can feel confident that hospitals receiving a Healthgrades 5-star rating have demonstrated exceptional outcomes and their ability to provide quality care.”

The hospital is also among the top 5% in the nation for Pulmonary Care Excellence. For more information, visit our clinical excellence awards. 

For its analysis, Healthgrades evaluated approximately 45 million Medicare inpatient records for nearly 4,500 short-term acute care hospitals nationwide to assess hospital performance in 31 common conditions and procedures and evaluated outcomes in appendectomy and bariatric surgery using all-payer data provided by 16 states. Healthgrades recognizes a hospital’s quality achievements for cohort-specific performance, specialty area performance, and overall clinical quality. Individual procedure or condition cohorts are designated as 5-star (statistically significantly better than expected), 3-star (not statistically different from expected), and 1-star (statistically significantly worse than expected). Learn more about the methodologies. 

*Statistics are based on Healthgrades analysis of MedPAR data for years 2018 through 2020 and represent three-year estimates for Medicare patients only. For appendectomy and bariatric surgery, Healthgrades used inpatient data from 16 states that provide all-payer data for years 2017 through 2019. Due to the highly variable impact of the pandemic on hospital outcomes, Healthgrades made the decision to exclude cases with a COVID-19 diagnosis from the 2020 data to preserve the statistical integrity of our models and fairly evaluate clinical outcomes at all hospitals.