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Hospital 'Team Spirit' Affects Heart Attack Survival
Researchers found differences between organization and communication approaches.
March 15, 2011— -- When you're having a heart attack, it's usually too late to choose which hospital will save your life. But as it turns out, the team spirit of the hospital staff can have a profound effect on your well-being when it comes to heart-related emergencies.
"The truth is that there are large variations in outcomes, and the hospital where you receive your heart attack care has a profound impact on whether you live or die," said Dr. Ashish Jha, associate professor of health policy and management at Harvard School of Public Health.
In fact, death rates for heart attack patients greatly vary throughout the country's hospitals -- as much as twofold between the highest- and lowest-performing hospitals.
Now, new research out of Yale University offers fresh hints as to how a hospital's organizational structure and interpersonal relationships among its staff relate to your chances of surviving a hospitalization for a heart emergency.
Yale researchers previously conducted a study in 2009, published in Circulation, which found that patients' outcomes and survival rates are greatly dependent, at least in part, on the hospital that provides their care.
This time around, researchers wanted to conduct a qualitative study that would analyze the top- and bottom-rated hospitals through site visits and in-depth personal interviews. The 11 hospitals remained anonymous in the study results.
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