2 Utah hospitals make top-100 list

Two Utah hospitals have been named to Solucient's 100 Top Hospitals: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success list.

St. Mark's Hospital was named a leading cardiovascular hospital in the category of teaching hospitals without cardiovascular residencies among hospitals with 200 or more acute-care beds.

LDS Hospital made the list in the category of teaching hospitals with cardiovascular residencies and 200 or more acute-care beds.

Solucient gathers its data from Medicare records and notes that 4,000 heart-disease patients who die each year could have survived if all hospitals performed at the level of the hospitals it recognizes as the Top 100..

It considers hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of cardiology patients and looks at key measures such as risk-adjusted mortality, complications, the percentage of coronary artery bypass grafts that use internal mammary artery instead of leg artery for the bypass (which yield fewer complications and better survival rates), procedure volume, severity-adjusted average hospital stay and severity-adjusted average cost.