Portsmouth Regional Hospital, part of HCA Healthcare, has again earned a distinguished three-star rating from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) for its patient care and outcomes in isolated coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures, also known as bypass surgery. PRH’s three-star rating, which is the highest possible quality rating, places it among the elite for heart bypass surgery in the U.S. and Canada.
Bypass surgery is used to treat coronary artery disease and improves blood flow to the heart. During the procedure, a healthy artery or vein is taken from another part of the body and joined, or grafted, to the obstructed coronary artery. The grafted artery or vein bypasses the blocked portion of the coronary artery, allowing the new channel to detour oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle.
The STS star rating system is one of the most sophisticated and highly regarded overall measures of quality in health care, rating the benchmarked outcomes of cardiothoracic surgery programs. The star rating is calculated using a combination of quality measures for specific procedures performed by an STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database participant.
Approximately 20 percent of participants receive the three-star rating for bypass surgery. The latest analysis of data for bypass surgery covers a 3-year period, from July 2021 through June 2024.
“Portsmouth Regional Hospital is committed to providing exceptional patient care,” said Michelle Dodd, RN, chief nursing officer and interim chief executive officer at Portsmouth Regional Hospital. “To have an organization such as The Society of Thoracic Surgeons consistently recognize our hard work and positive patient outcomes is especially rewarding.”
“The Society of Thoracic Surgeons congratulates STS National Database participants who have received three-star ratings,” said David M. Shahian, MD, chair of the Task Force on Quality Measurement. “Participation in the Database and public reporting demonstrates a commitment to quality improvement in health care delivery and helps provide patients and their families with meaningful information to help them make informed decisions about health care.”
The STS National Database was established in 1989 as an initiative for quality improvement and patient safety among cardiothoracic surgeons. The Database includes four components: the Adult Cardiac Surgery Database (ACSD), the Congenital Heart Surgery Database (CHSD), the General Thoracic Surgery Database (GTSD), and the mechanical circulatory support database (Intermacs). The STS ACSD houses approximately 6.9 million surgical records and gathers information from more than 3,800 participating physicians, including surgeons and anesthesiologists from more than 90 percent of groups that perform heart surgery in the US. STS public reporting online enables STS ACSD participants to voluntarily report to each other and the public their heart surgery scores and star ratings.