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Specialty Excellence Award
TM
Methodology 2007-2008
Introduction
HealthGrades analyzed and assigned star ratings by different specialty areas. The overall rating of each
specialty area is a combined rating of one or more medical conditions or procedures (e.g., heart attack,
coronary bypass surgery).
The top 10 percent of hospitals within each specialty area were selected to be HealthGrades 2007 Specialty
Excellence Award recipients. The following descriptions show how HealthGrades calculated each specialty
area rating.
Data Sources
HealthGrades quality ratings are derived from the following data sources:
·
HealthGrades uses data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services based upon
hospitalized Medicare patients for years 2003 through 2005; and
·
Inpatient data for maternity care, women's health, and bariatric surgery provided by 19 states (AZ,
CA, FL, IA, MA, MD, ME, NC, NJ, NV, NY, OR, PA, RI, TX, UT, VA, WA, and WI) for years 2003
through 2005; and
·
Inpatient data for appendectomy provided by 17 states (AZ, CA, FL, IA, MA, MD, ME, NC, NJ, NV,
NY, PA, TX, UT, VA, WA, and WI) for years 2002 through 2004.
Bariatric Surgery
The Bariatric Surgery service area rating is based on:
·
Bariatric surgery
To be included in this ranking, a hospital must have a rating in bariatric surgery
.
Inpatient data from 19
states are used to calculate bariatric surgery ratings. To be ranked, a hospital must be located in one of the
19 all-payer states.
