Phoebe Cardiothoracic Surgery again earns national recognition

Albany, Ga. – Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital has again earned the highest rating from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) for its patient care and outcomes in isolated coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures.  The distinguished three-star rating denotes the highest category of quality and places Phoebe among the elite for heart bypass surgery in the US and Canada.

“There are about 1,000 programs across the country that participate in the STS databank.  They’re able to compare one program to another program to another program,” said Anthony Hoots, MD, Phoebe Cardiothoracic Surgeon.  “Three stars means, the procedures that we do, we do really well.”

The rating covers a rolling three-year period, and Phoebe has maintained its top rating for five consecutive rating periods over the last three years.

“The Society of Thoracic Surgeons leads the effort in quality improvement by maintaining one of the most penetrant clinical databases in cardiothoracic surgery that employs high-fidelity risk models to provide risk-adjusted outcomes to individual participants,” said Ram Kumar Subramanyan, MD, PhD, Chair of the STS Council on Quality and Research. “STS thanks participants for voluntarily submitting data to the databases, demonstrating their commitment to improving healthcare delivery. Voluntary public reporting of outcomes by individual participants provides patients and their families with meaningful information to help them make informed decisions about healthcare.”

The STS star rating system is one of the most sophisticated and highly regarded overall measures of quality in healthcare, rating the benchmarked outcomes of cardiothoracic surgery programs across the US and Canada. The star rating is calculated using a combination of quality measures for specific procedures performed by an STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database participant.

In addition to performing open-heart surgeries, Dr. Hoots and Dr. Scott Johnson also assist Phoebe Structural Heart Cardiologist Dr. Mark Cohen with transaortic valve replacements (TAVR).  Phoebe’s Heart & Vascular team has now performed 250 of these minimally invasive procedures.  Dr. Hoots said he was shocked when he first heard about the procedure that replaces the heart’s main valve without open-heart surgery, but now it has become a routine procedure at advanced cardiac centers.

“If I do surgical aortic valve replacement, it’s old-fashioned open-heart surgery, and you’re in the hospital for four or five days, and it takes you six weeks to recover.  With TAVR, patients usually go home the next day and are back to normal activity within a week,” he said.

Phoebe’s cardiothoracic surgery program has also expanded its capabilities in thoracic surgery which includes procedures involving the chest organs – excluding the heart – such as lungs, esophagus, trachea and chest wall.  For the last several years, the majority of lung resections – a surgical procedure to remove part or all of a diseased lung, primarily used to treat cancer, infections or severe damage – have been completed using minimally invasive video-assisted surgery.  More recently, Phoebe has begun using robot-assisted surgery for these procedures, further enhancing precision.

Dr. Hoots says Phoebe also continues to strengthen its vascular surgery program.  “Dr. (Dan) Martin has built an outstanding vascular program, and he’s been nationally recognized for that.  He and Dr. (Dominic) Suma offer very high-quality vascular services,” Dr. Hoots said.  “Dr. Johnson and I take care of cardiac issues, so our patients and their families can have a high level of confidence that they will be well taken care of at Phoebe.”

The STS is a not-for-profit organization representing more than 7,800 cardiothoracic surgeons, researchers and allied health professionals worldwide who are dedicated to ensuring the best possible outcomes for surgeries of the heart, lung and esophagus, as well as other surgical procedures within the chest.  The Society’s mission is to enhance the ability of cardiothoracic surgeons to provide the highest quality patient care through education, research and advocacy.

The STS National Database was established in 1989 as an initiative for quality improvement and patient safety among cardiothoracic surgeons.  It contains more than 10 million surgical records from 6,000 participating physicians and encompasses more than 95% of adult cardiac and congenital heart surgery performed in the US.

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