South Nassau Receives Healthgrades Coronary Intervention Excellence Award & Five-Star Recognition for Coronary Interventional Procedures

Awards place South Nassau in the top 10% for coronary interventional procedures
Only LI Hospital Named One of Healthgrades' 100 Best for Orthopedics for Second Consecutive Year

Healthgrades has announced that South Nassau Communities Hospital is a recipient of its 2019 Coronary Intervention Excellence Award™ and 5 stars for its performance in Coronary Interventional Procedures. The awards place South Nassau in the top 10% in the US for Coronary Interventional Procedures in 2019.

The awards are based on Healthgrades’ evaluation of nearly 4,500 hospitals nationwide for 33 of the most common inpatient procedures and conditions, including cardiovascular disease, and identified the 100 best-performing hospitals across all conditions or procedures within this service line. Healthgrades is the leading independent, online resource for comprehensive information about physicians and hospitals.

“For the residents and communities we serve, these awards testify to the fact that in the event you, a loved one or friend need expert, advanced, potentially life-saving cardiac care, you need look no further than South Nassau,” said Lawrence Kanner, MD, FACC, South Nassau’s chief of Cardiology.

The achievements are part of findings released by Healthgrades and is featured in its 2019 Report to the Nation (which can be found at www.healthgrades.com/quality). The report demonstrates how clinical performance continues to differ dramatically between hospitals regionally and nationally.

“These awards reflect the commitment to clinical excellence and service demonstrated by the team of physicians, nurses and clinical staff of our Center for Cardiovascular Health,” said Richard J. Murphy, president and CEO at South Nassau Communities Hospital. “Long Island residents rely on South Nassau because we consistently provide cutting edge care and use the latest advancements in cardiac diagnostic technologies.”

South Nassau is in the process of affiliating with the Mount Sinai Health Network, which is ranked 10th in the nation for Cardiology and Heart Surgery by U.S. News and World Report. To hear more about how this relationship is impacting South Nassau’s cardiac patients, visit here.

Hundreds of Long Island residents each year turn to South Nassau’s Center for Cardiovascular Health, which treats patients with the combination of advanced technologies and best practices and is equipped with the latest advancements in cardiac digital imaging systems.  The center performs a wide range of coronary and peripheral interventional procedures, including balloon angioplasty, stenting and thrombolytic therapy. When providing balloon angioplasty in an emergency, the center consistently completes the procedure in approximately 62.5 minutes, which is 27.5 minutes faster than the national standard door-to-balloon time benchmark of 90 minutes. (Door-to-balloon time is the time measured in minutes from the moment the patient walks in the door to the point the artery in the heart is reopened with a stent.)

“The numbers speak for themselves—South Nassau’s cardiovascular services team has set the standard for other hospitals on Long Island,” said Adhi Sharma, MD, South Nassau’s chief medical officer. “I am proud of our team for remaining focused on service excellence and providing our patients with the advanced, compassionate cardiovascular care that they deserve.”

South Nassau is a recipient of numerous other awards from Healthgrades for 2019.  It is the only hospital on Long Island to achieve the Healthgrades annual America’s 100 Best Hospitals for Orthopedic Surgery™ for a second consecutive year.  Additionally, South Nassau is a recipient of Healthgrades’

• Orthopedic Surgery Excellence Award™
• 5-star ratings for Total Knee Replacement, Total Hip Replacement and Hip Fracture Treatment
• Five-Star Recipient for Treatment of Pneumonia five years in a row
• Five-Star Recipient for Appendectomy
• Five-Star Recipient for Gastrointestinal
• Five-Star Recipient for Critical Care in 2019.
  

South Nassau has also received Healthgrades honors in 2018 for patient safety and in women’s care, receiving the Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellence Award for three years in a row (2016-2018); Healthgrades Gynecologic Procedures Excellence Award for five years in a row (2013-2018); Superior Performance in Gynecologic Procedures for five years in a row (2013-2018) and Five-Star rating for Hysterectomy for four consecutive years (2015-2018).

Electrophysiologists at the center use advanced technologies to provide timely, accurate diagnoses and therapies to treat a range of cardiac arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythms). Services include diagnostic studies, implantation and testing of pacemakers and cardioverter defibrillators, and radiofrequency catheter ablation for the treatment of potentially fatal irregular heartbeats.

The center’s clinical and noninvasive cardiologists specialize in transthoracic echocardiogram (a noninvasive, highly accurate and quick assessment of the overall health of the heart, in which a probe is placed on the chest wall of the patient to produce images of the heart); transesophageal echocardiogram (which uses a specialized probe containing an ultrasound transducer at its tip that is passed into the esophagus and is used to provide clear views of areas of the heart that would be difficult to view transthoracically); and stress echocardiogram (which involves exercising on a treadmill or stationary bicycle while the patient is monitored by technology using high-frequency sound waves that produce a graphic outline of the heart’s movement, valves and chambers).

Additional cardiac imaging services offered by the center include nuclear cardiology (which generates images of the heart at work, during exercise and at rest) and diagnostic peripheral vascular ultrasound (noninvasive diagnostic technique used to evaluate the health of blood vessels) for patients with peripheral arterial disease.

The treatments and therapies prescribed by the center’s physicians to remedy the cardiovascular condition and prevent it from recurring are complemented by patient-centered rehabilitation provided by South Nassau’s Cardiac Rehabilitation Program (located at 440 Merrick Road in Oceanside).

The Cardiac Rehabilitation Program provides a comprehensive, individualized plan of cardiac strengthening therapy for people who have had a recent heart attack, heart surgery or have been diagnosed with stable angina. This 12-week program includes therapeutic exercise, cardiac risk assessment, nutritional assessment and counseling, stress reduction and education on the heart-healthy lifestyle. The facility and its multidisciplinary program have been certified by the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation.

South Nassau is accredited by the Intersocietal Commission for Accreditation of Echocardiography Laboratories; is designated an Aetna Institute of Quality for interventional cardiology and rhythm disease diagnosis and treatment; and is a recipient of The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval® for disease-specific care for its heart failure program, the American College of Cardiology Foundation’s National Cardiology Data Registry ACTION Registry, and the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s–Get With the Guidelines Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award as well as its Target: Heart Failure Honor Roll.

The Healthgrades awards are among a multitude of other awards for safety and quality that South Nassau has earned during the past year, including:

• Healthgrades Top 10 Percent of Hospitals Evaluated for Gynecologic Procedures, Gynecologic Procedures Excellence Award, Superior Performance in Gynecologic Procedures Award, 5-Star Recipient for Hysterectomy;
• American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet^® re-designation;
• The Joint Commission Perinatal Care Certification;
• Infectious Diseases Society of America Antimicrobial Stewardship Centers of Excellence designation;
• Healthgrades Patient Safety Award, Healthgrades Top 5 Percent of Hospitals for Patient Safety, Healthgrades Top 10 Percent of Hospitals for Patient Safety;
• Becker’s Hospital Review “100 Hospitals with Great Women’s Health Programs”;
• Infectious Disease Society of America Antimicrobial Stewardship Centers of Excellence
• Re-accreditation designation by the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers;
• Get With The Guidelines®–Heart Failure Gold-Plus Quality Achievement Award by the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Foundation;
• American Heart Association/American Stroke Association Get With The Guidelines Stroke Gold Plus Achievement Award with Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus;
• IPRO (Improving Healthcare for the Common Good) End-Stage Renal Disease Network Quality Award for Highest ICH CAHPS Score in New York;
• IPRO End Stage Renal Network Five Diamond Safety Award (for both the Inpatient Dialysis Unit and the Outpatient Dialysis Center);
• TCU (Transitional Care Unit) CMS Nursing Home Compare 5- Star Rating;
• TCU US News & World Report Top Nursing Homes in America.
  

Designated a Magnet^® hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) for outstanding nursing care, South Nassau® Communities Hospital is one of the region’s largest hospitals, with 455 beds, more than 900 physicians and 3,500 employees. Located in Oceanside, NY, the hospital is an acute-care, not-for-profit teaching hospital that provides state-of-the-art care in cardiac, oncologic, orthopedic, bariatric, pain management, mental health and emergency services.

 In addition to its extensive outpatient specialty centers, South Nassau provides emergency and elective angioplasty, and offers Novalis Tx™ and Gamma Knife® radiosurgery technologies. South Nassau operates the only Trauma Center on the South Shore of Nassau County verified by the American College of Surgeons as well as Long Island’s only free-standing, 9-1-1 receiving Emergency Department in Long Beach. South Nassau also is a designated Stroke Center by the New York State Department of Health and Comprehensive Community Cancer Center by the American College of Surgeons, and is an accredited center of the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Association and Quality Improvement Program.

In addition, the hospital has been awarded the Joint Commission’s gold seal of approval for disease-specific care for hip replacement, knee replacement, heart failure, bariatric surgery, wound care and end-stage renal disease. For more information, visit www.southnassau.org.