By George Bischalaney, President & CEO, Eden Medical Center

Yesterday, one of Eden Medical Center’s neurosurgeons, Dr. Dickinson blogged about what’s in store for neuroscience at the new Sutter Castro Valley hospital. Coincidentally, Eden was also mentioned in an article in the AARP Bulletin on February 2, which it picked up from the Contra Costa Times.

The article basically said that the State of California through its Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) had released statewide data on “hospital death rates.” This data has been collected for some time and the most recent release includes data for 2007.

Eden was identified as having a “Better-Than-Average” rating for patients who undergo craniotomies, which is a procedure for removing brain tumors. The statewide average was 6.7%, while the rate at Eden was measured at 0.7%. We were one of 25 hospitals, among 400 hospitals statewide, with better than average results, and one of only three in the Bay Area. These results do not come about by accident or good fortune.

Eden has been a designated trauma center in Alameda County for over 20 years. The experience and training of our trauma center staff has helped strengthen the services we offer in surgery, critical care, diagnostics, rehabilitation and general medical care. The methods used by the trauma center surgical team have carried over to every patient treated at Eden.

Building upon the trauma center’s effectiveness and with the support of Sutter Health, Eden established the Sutter East Bay Neuroscience Center several years ago. One of the mainstays of these programs is neurosurgery (brain surgery). Eden is blessed with a core of very highly regarded and skilled neurosurgeons as part of its medical community. It is because of their expertise and our joint commitment to excellence in neurosciences that we have been able to have such outstanding results with this critically ill patient population.

OSHPD has a website with a link to all of the recently released data (go to www.oshpd.ca.gov and click on AHRQ). OSHPD points out that this data is risk adjusted, to ensure that all hospitals are treated fairly and that evidence suggests that high mortality may be associated with deficiencies in the quality of hospital care provided.

Public reporting of hospital data will become more common, and its use by consumers greater over time so that they can be better armed when making important decisions about where to seek their health care services.