Melbourne, Fla. (December 8, 2004) — Holmes Regional Medical Center has been named one of the nation's 100 Top cardiovascular hospitals by a leading healthcare research and information firm — one of only 30 community hospitals to make the list.

The annual Solucient® award for cardiovascular services objectively measures performance on key criteria at the nation's top performing acute-care hospitals. This is the third time Holmes Regional Medical Center (HRMC) has been recognized with this honor, having achieved it previously in 1999 and 2000.

"Being a Top 100 hospital means that our cardiac patients who've undergone treatment for open heart surgery, angioplasty, heart attacks or congestive heart failure are receiving care at one of the top facilities in the country," says Chris Finton, MD, MHA, Executive Director, Health First Heart Institute and Vice President-Medical Affairs at HRMC. "It's also important recognition for our team of physicians, nurses and technicians as they help set the bar for quality cardiovascular care in the nation."

Based at HRMC, the Health First Heart Institute provides the framework that supports heart care at all three of Health First's hospitals in Brevard County.

The 2004 Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success study appears in the Oct. 25 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine. Solucient is based in Evanston, Ill.

Among the key findings:

• Although they are sicker than ever before, more coronary bypass patients across the nation are surviving surgery, and at higher than anticipated rates. The Solucient 100 Top Hospitals® Cardiovascular award winners are leading the nation in this new trend.
• If cardiovascular services in all acute-care hospitals performed at the same level as the hospitals with the nation's top cardiovascular services, 4,200 additional cardiovascular patients could survive each year; and an additional 1,600 patients could be complication-free.
• Top 100 hospitals are 35 percent less likely than non-winners to have post-operative infections and 20 percent less likely than non-winners to have post-operative hemorrhage for patients undergoing CABG or percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI).
• Top 100 hospitals annually perform twice as many bypass surgeries and PCIs, including angioplasties, as their peers.
• Cardiovascular patients at the Top 100 hospitals return to everyday life faster than those at non-winning hospitals. Patients at the winning hospitals were released more than a half-day earlier than patients at peer hospitals.
• Average cardiovascular-related costs for benchmark hospitals were nearly 13 percent lower than at peer hospitals.

The sixth edition of the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success study analyzed acute-care hospitals nationwide using detailed empirical performance data from publicly available Medicare MedPAR data and Medicare cost reports. The measures were calculated for three classes of hospitals with the following number of winners in each:

• Teaching with Cardiovascular Residency Programs — 30 winners
• Teaching without Cardiovascular Residency Programs — 40 winners
• Community — 30 winners

Solucient® scored facilities in seven key performance areas: risk-adjusted medical mortality, risk-adjusted surgical mortality, complications, percentage of CABG patients with internal mammary artery use, procedure volume, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and wage and severity-adjusted average cost.

Holmes Regional Medical Center was recognized in the Community hospital category. It currently treats heart patients at three open-heart surgery suites, five advanced cardiac catheterization laboratories, a 16-bed cardiovascular intensive care unit and 10-bed coronary care unit.

Construction is underway on an expanded 375,000 square foot heart center, which when completed in 2006 will include three floors with 144 private rooms. The facility will facilitate four cardiovascular operating rooms, eight cardiac catheterization labs, a 14-bed cardiovascular intensive care unit, 22-bed coronary care unit, 108 private progressive care unit (PCU) beds, non-invasive diagnostic services and a nuclear medicine unit.

At Health First
Laura Manning, Media Relations
(321) 434-4359

At Solucient
Ginny Sexton
(847) 424-4358