DENVER – HealthGrades, Inc., an online healthcare quality rating and services company, has identified the top 10 cities for emergency medical care, based on a study of 7 million Medicare patient records from 2007 to 2009.

The study focused on 12 of the most common and life-threatening medical emergencies among that patient population:

• Bowel Obstruction
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
• Diabetic Acidosis and Coma
• Gastrointestinal Bleed
• Heart Attack
• Heart Failure
• Pancreatitis
• Pneumonia
• Pulmonary Embolism
• Respiratory Failure
• Sepsis
• Stroke

[See also: HealthGrades ranks top 50 hospitals for 2011.]

Acording to the report, the best-performing hospitals are those that have combined rates of mortality low enough to place them among the top 5 percent of hospitals in the nation for emergency medicine. From this analysis, HealthGrades identified 268 hospitals with the lowest risk-adjusted mortality and designated these as recipients of the Emergency Medicine Excellence Award.

[See also: HealthGrades ranks top 50 cities for hospital care.]

"This Emergency Medicine Excellence Award is intended as a proxy for the effectiveness of a hospital's multi-disciplinary teamwork and its ability to diagnose, triage and provide timely care to their patients admitted through the emergency department," the report said.

“In the case of a medical emergency, patients need to get to the closest emergency room as fast as
possible. No exceptions,” said Rick May, study co-author and HealthGrades vice president of clinical
quality services. “That said, we encourage patients to prepare in advance by identifying top-performing
hospitals close to home. Our research shows that it’s not just the care you receive the moment you arrive
that makes the difference between life and death, but the hospital’s ability to continue to provide you with
the right care at the right time if you need to be admitted.”

The HealthGrades Emergency Medicine in American Hospitals study identified the following Top 10
Cities for Emergency Medicine, based on overall mortality rate for patients admitted through the
emergency department:

• Cincinnati, Ohio
• Phoenix, Ariz.
• Milwaukee, Wis.
• Dayton, Ohio
• Cleveland, Ohio
• W. Palm Beach, Fla.
• Tucson, Ariz.
• Baltimore, Md.
• Houston, Texas
• Detroit, Mich.

Other key findings of the study include:

• Medicare patients treated at hospitals recognized with a HealthGrades Emergency Medicine Excellence Award had, on average, a 40 percent lower risk of death compared to patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.
• On average, for the 12 conditions studied, the percentage of cases admitted through the emergency department increased 2.64 percent from 2007 to 2009.
• Providence, R.I.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; and New York City had the highest percentage of admission through the emergency department (93.05 percent, 91.65 percent, 91.12 percent and 90.78 percent, respectively); whereas, Lincoln, Neb.; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Wichita, Kan.; and Omaha, Neb. had the lowest percentage of admissions through the emergency department (48.06 percent, 53.72 percent, 54.84 percent and 62.32 percent, respectively) for the 12 conditions studied.

Click here to see a list of the 268 hospitals that recipients of the Emergency Medicine Excellence Award.