Barnes-Jewish Hospital is one of the nation''s top cardiovascular hospitals in a new report by Evaston, IL-based Solucient. The 2006 Solucient awards for the 100 Top Hospitals for cardiovascular services measure performance on key criteria at the nation''s top performing acute-care hospitals. Barnes-Jewish is the only hospital in the St. Louis area to be recognized in the report.

It''s another honor for cardiovascular services at Barnes-Jewish. In their 2006 "Best Hospitals" issue, US News & World Report ranked Barnes-Jewish and Washington University School of Medicine''s "Heart and Heart Surgery" program as the 10th best in the nation.

"Cardiovascular services at Barnes-Jewish Hospital have a long history of innovation and leadership in patient care," says Ralph Damiano, MD, chief of cardiac surgery at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine. "We''ve developed and refined many new life-saving procedures and we also perform the highest volume of heart and vascular procedures in the region, which results in superior outcomes for our patients."

The range of services at Barnes-Jewish includes preventive care to the management of coronary artery disease, heart failure, arrhythmias including heart assist devices and transplantation. In 2005, Washington University heart specialists performed 21,989 cardiac procedures and evaluated 100,987 patient encounters, the highest volumes in the region. The division has 72 cardiology members and seven cardiac surgeons.

"It is the exceptional care provided by our employees and physician partners from Washington University School of Medicine that continually earns our cardiovascular services such prestige," says Andy Ziskind, MD, Barnes-Jewish Hospital president.

Solucient scored facilities in eight key performance areas: risk-adjusted medical mortality, risk-adjusted surgical mortality, risk-adjusted complications, core measures score, percentage of CABG patients with internal mammary artery use, procedure volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and wage- and severity-adjusted average cost. Barnes-Jewish was one of 30 hospitals recognized as a teaching hospital with a cardiovascular residency program.

The 2006 "Solucient 100 Top Hospitals: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success" study appears in the Nov. 6 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine. Solucient is an information products company serving the healthcare industry, providing tools and insights that healthcare managers use to improve the performance of their organizations.