Over the past century, Americans have benefited from wave upon wave of medical innovation and advancement—with life expectancy climbing from about 60 years in 1924 to 76.4 today. But throughout that period, and despite all that progress, what Americans are most likely to die from has remained constant. Today, just as 100 years ago, cardiovascular disease is the country’s number-one killer. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, someone dies of heart disease every 33 seconds. In 2021, cardiovascular disease claimed the lives of 695,000 people in the U.S., and while such deaths have come down dramatically in the past century thanks to medications and health system improvements, they’ve begun trending upward in recent years—in line rising risk factors like obesity and diabetes.
Despite its long and deadly reign, many Americans underappreciate the threat of heart disease: Less than half of the population realize it’s the leading cause of death, according to a recent survey from the American Heart Association. Meanwhile, 38% of the U.S. population that has high blood pressure is unaware of their at-risk condition, and 20% of heart attack survivors—those who experienced a “silent” event—don’t realize they’ve had one. Heart disease costs the country an estimated $240 billion every year.
In other words, heart health is important—which is why, for the past two decades, the 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals study and Premier’s PINC AI 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals list has drawn upon public data sources to evaluate and benchmark the level of cardiovascular care across the country. This year’s ranking looked at 940 U.S. hospitals and assessed their performance based on metrics including clinical outcomes (inpatient mortality and complications as well as readmission and 30-day mortality rates), operational efficiency (average length and cost of stay), and patient experience.
This year’s top-rated hospitals performed better than their peers on all 23 measures. For example, for patients undergoing a coronary artery bypass graft, or a CABG—a procedure in which a blood vessel is attached to the coronary artery to bypass a blockage—at list-making hospitals, inpatient mortality was 50% lower and complications 32% fewer; patients at top hospitals also experienced a shorter stay for a CABG by a margin of a day and had a lower-cost procedure ($40,115, compared to $50,061) than those at peer institutions.
To be considered, hospitals had to provide all forms of cardiovascular care, including open heart surgery; for the ranking, hospitals were classified by bed size and teaching status into three groups: community hospitals, and teaching hosp
