Heart Patients Can Make Use of Facts and Figures to Make Decisions On Health

Having been a part of treating heart patients here in Bangkok more than 3 years with VesCell adult stem cell therapy, I constantly hear our overseas patients complain about the care they receive back at home (usually the USA, but sometimes Australia, or Canada). And, in turn, they usually rave about the quality of patient care they receive here in Thailand.

They will talk about how clean the hospitals are compared to their hometown. Or, they will crow about how attentive the nurses are, or how professional and thorough the doctors are.

However, the point of this post is not to convince you how wonderful our stem cell health care for heart patients is in Bangkok (although it is really great!).

The point of this post is to give you another resource that can have a direct impact on your health. I just found this new website run by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. This great site- Hospital Compare- has hard facts and figures available so patients can compare hospitals in their area.

The site has mortality rates of each hospital as well as general data which can help you (or your loved ones) pick the best quality hospital in your area.

I did a comparison of two hospitals in California treating heart attacks as an example as to what kind of information you can find on this site:

The % of Heart Attack Patients Given PCI (angioplasty or angioplasty with stent) Within 90 Minutes of Arrival if appropriate-

From the data, I found that the United States average is 63%. That means in the United States, 63% of heart attack patients will receive a PCI within 90 minutes of reaching the hospital. If you reverse the numbers, this means that 37% of US patients who have a heart attack do not receive a PCI within 1 1/2 hours of their arrival even though every minute is critical when you are having a heart attack.

The California Average for this was 64% and the two hospitals I chose were 75% and 50% respectively.

If you are a patient in the United States with any sort of condition or disease, this website will provide some useful facts that can have a direct impact on your health. I urge you to go to http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov and check it out.

Information and data on the following medical conditions and surgical procedures can be found on Hospital Compare

Medical Conditions

+ Heart Attack
+ Heart Failure
+ Chronic Lung Disease
+ Pneumonia
+ Diabetes in Adults
+ Chest Pain

Surgical Procedures

o Heart and Blood Vessels
+ Angioplasty Procedures
+ Heart Bypass Surgery
+ Heart Valve Operations
+ Insertion of Heart Defibrillator
+ Pacemaker Implant
+ Major Heart and Blood Vessel Procedures
+ Head and Neck Blood Vessel Operations
o Abdominal
+ Gallbladder Removal
+ Hernia Operations
+ Intestine Operations
+ Stomach and Esophagus Operations
o Neck, Back and Extremities (Arms and Legs)
+ Back Fusion
+ Neck Fusion
+ Back and Neck Operations
+ Operations on Upper Extremities (Arm and Shoulder)
+ Operations on Lower Extremities (such as Hip, Knee, Ankle)
+ Other Bone Procedures
+ Bone Removal
o Bladder, Kidney and Prostate
+ Kidney and Bladder Operations
+ Other Kidney and Bladder Operations
+ Prostate Removal
o Female Reproductive
+ Female Reproductive Operations