America's Best Hospitals 2009-2010- GO UCLA!!!

UCLA Rocks...I love my doctors there!


America's Best Hospitals: 2009-10 Honor Roll
They're the best of the best—the 0.4 percent of all hospitals with high scores in 6 or more specialties.
By Avery Comarow, U.S. News & World Report
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America's Best Hospitals
America's Best Children's Hospitals

America's Best Hospitals, an annual ranking of the country's elite medical centers, is a tool for patients who need medical sophistication most facilities cannot offer. Unlike other rankings and ratings that grade hospitals on how well they execute routine procedures like outpatient hernia repair or manage common conditions like low-grade heart failure, the U.S. News approach looks at how well a hospital handles complex and demanding situations—replacing an 85-year-old man's heart valve, diagnosing and treating a spinal tumor, and dealing with inflammatory bowel disease, to name three examples. High-stakes medicine.

This year, the 20th for Best Hospitals, institutions are ranked in 16 specialties, from cancer and heart disease to respiratory disorders and urology. A total of 4,861 hospitals were considered; 174, or less than 0.4 percent of the total, were ranked in even one of the 16 specialties.
In 12 of the 16 specialties, those in which quality of care can spell life or death, hospitals were scored on reputation, death rate, patient safety, and care-related factors such as nursing and patient services; the 50 highest scorers were ranked. Scores and complete data for unranked hospitals are available as well. In the other four specialties—ophthalmology, psychiatry, rehabilitation, and rheumatology—hospitals were ranked on reputation alone, because so few patients die that mortality data don't mean much.

Here are a few of the details: Reputation, which counted as 32.5 percent of the score, was based on three years of specialist surveys—a total of almost 10,000 physicians were asked to name five hospitals they consider among the best in their specialty for difficult cases, without taking into account cost or location. A mortality index, also 32.5 percent of the score, indicates a hospital's ability to keep patients with serious problems alive. Patient safety, new this year, made up 5 percent of the score; it indicates how well a hospital minimizes harm to patients. And a group of other care-related factors, such as nurse staffing and available technology, accounted for the remaining 30 percent.
Of the 174 hospitals that are ranked in one or more specialties, 21 qualified for the Honor Roll by earning high scores in at least six specialties. This demonstrates unusual breadth of excellence. Johns Hopkins Hospital tops the list, as it has every year from 1991 on. (The Mayo Clinic was No. 1 in 1990, Best Hospitals' first year.)
Hospitals are listed by total points. A hospital got 2 points if ranked at or close to the top in a specialty and 1 point if ranked slightly lower.

Rank Hospital

1 Johns Hopkins Hospital — Baltimore, MD
2 Mayo Clinic — Rochester, MN
3 Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center — Los Angeles, CA
4 Cleveland Clinic — Cleveland, OH
5 Massachusetts General Hospital — Boston, MA
6 Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia— New York, NY
7 University of California, San Francisco Medical — San Francisco, CA
8 Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania — Philadelphia, PA
9 Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University — St. Louis, MO
10 Brigham and Women's Hospital — Boston, MA
10 Duke University Medical Center — Durham, NC
12 University of Washington Medical Center — Seattle, WA
13UPMC-University of Pittsburgh Medical Center — Pittsburgh, PA
14 University of Michigan Hospitals/Health Centers — Ann Arbor, MI
15 Stanford Hospital and Clinics — Stanford, CA
16 Vanderbilt University Medical Center — Nashville, TN
17 NYU Medical Center — New York, NY
17 Yale-New Haven Hospital — New Haven, CT
19 Mount Sinai Medical Center — New York, NY
20 Methodist Hospital — Houston, TX
21 Ohio State University Hospital — Columbus, OH

ATTENTION PHRIENDS!!

OK...all of my PHer PHriends listen up!!

If you guys are interested in getting more involved with PHA and meeting others that have PH and/or caretakers of PHers...this is your chance! We need your help!!

Focus groups are being formed to help PHA develop points of connection, targeted information and programs that meet their specific needs for the following groups. If you feel you fit in one of these groups please click on the link below and take a quick 3-4 minute survey.

• Newly diagnosed patients
• Patients whose PH is related to another disease
• Families with children with PH
• Caregivers of PH patients
• Young adults (18–30) with PH

This is your chance to make a difference and get your voice heard. If there is something you want to bring up to PHA that could help others out, TAKE THIS SURVEY. If you have creative ideas that you feel other PHers and their caretakers would be interested in, TAKE THIS SURVEY!! A small group of people will be selected to participate but all will be informed about the outcome of the first focus group. PHA needs our help. They have done so much for us, it's an easy way to return the love!

To participate, click here or click on the link below:

http://www.phassociation.org/focusgroups.asp

Thank you and love to you all!!

No more IV Remodulin?

I saw this on the PH message boards...I find it very interesting...especially for those of us who fear line infections from IV or site pain from Sub-Q...I wonder if UCLA is in on the trial...if anyone hears how this goes or is part of the study, can you let me know how it goes? Thanks!!

My doctor told me at my visit that in August they will probably be starting a trial using an implanted pump for Remodulin. It will be the stage one safety study and 10 PH centers will be participating.All I can tell you is that the pump would be implanted in the abdomen and it would be refilled once every 3 months by a PH nurse from Accredo, Caremark, or at the PH center. It would have an internal catheter going directly to the heart, similar to IV. However, there wouldn't be the risk of being dislodged, site infections, or pain that exist with the current pump delivery systems. Forgive me if this has been posted before, but I haven't been on the boards for months and I don't feel inspired to go back and search. If anyone knows more about this new pump method please feel free to chime in.

I wonder what the risks are for this "implanted" pump...hmmm...I would also like to know the study name for this...