Better MI Outcomes and Quality of Care at Teaching Hospitals

Care at teaching hospitals is more expensive than care at community hospitals -- raising the question of what benefits patients derive from the extra costs. To analyze quality of care and outcomes, researchers reviewed charts from a large random sample of 114,411 Medicare patients with acute myocardial infarction. Sites of care were categorized as major teaching, minor teaching, or nonteaching hospitals.

Patients in major teaching hospitals were most likely to be black and to have hypertension, chronic renal insufficiency, or a history of prior angioplasty or coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Among patients without contraindications to therapies, rates of use for aspirin, angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors, and beta-blockers were h…