Cardiac surgery program earns honors

HERSHEY — The Cardiac Surgery program at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center has earned a distinguished three-star rating from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons for its patient care and outcomes in three categories. The three-star rating, which denotes the highest category of quality, places Milton S. Hershey Medical Center among the nation’s top-performing heart surgery centers.

The program earned three-star ratings for:

• Isolated coronary artery bypass grafting

• Isolated aortic valve replacement surgery

• Multi-procedural composite measures, which involves a combination of all cardiac procedures, including valves and coronary bypass surgeries.

The STS star rating system is one of the most sophisticated and highly regarded overall measures of quality in health care, rating the benchmarked outcomes of cardiothoracic surgery programs across the United States 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.