Kansas Heart Hospital has received the HealthGrades 2006 Cardiac Care Excellence AwardTM, according to information released today by HealthGrades, the nation’s leading provider of independent hospital ratings. Kansas Heart Hospital is the only hospital in Kansas to receive this award. To qualify for the award Kansas Heart Hospital was:

Ranked among the top ten percent in the nation for overall Cardiac Services

The recognition is based on HealthGrades annual analysis of more than 37 million Medicare patient discharges at nearly every hospital in the country.

“It’s an honor to be ranked among the top hospitals in the country by an independent source such as HealthGrades” said Thomas L. Ashcom, M.D., Ph.D., CEO of Kansas Heart Hospital “I’d like to congratulate our physicians and staff for their dedication to quality and the outstanding patient outcomes they provide to this community.”

As part of its eighth annual Hospital Quality in America Study, HealthGrades independently analyzed more than 5,000 hospitals in all 50 states and the District of Columbia for its 2006 ratings, objectively assessing their clinical outcomes and quality. The data utilized in the assessment is licensed from the federal government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and is risk-adjusted, so that hospitals with differing patient populations can be compared on equal footing. The HealthGrades ratings measure whether patient outcomes for each of more than two dozen procedures and diagnoses are better than expected (5-Star), as expected (3-Star) or worse than expected (1-Star).

“Each year HealthGrades identifies the top performers in several clinical areas, and we’re happy to announce that Kansas Heart Hospital is a recipient of the 2006 Cardiac Care Excellence Award," said Samantha Collier, M.D., HealthGrades vice president of medical affairs.

The 2006 HealthGrades ratings for all hospitals nationwide are available to consumers, free of charge, on the web at www.healthgrades.com. More than two-and-a-half million individuals and more than 125 of the nation’s largest employers rely on HealthGrades web site to research quality information about hospitals, nursing homes and physicians. HealthGrades also rates hospitals’ patient safety outcomes, based on indicators developed by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.