Hospitals' unnecessary coronary stent use costs Medicare $800 million a year, according to a new report from the Lown Institute.
The independent think tank used Medicare claims data to examine the overuse of percutaneous coronary interventions, which includes coronary stent or balloon angioplasty, at 1,773 hospitals with the capacity to perform the procedure. The findings estimate more than 20% of stents were placed unnecessarily in Medicare patients from 2019-21. See more of the key findings here.
Below are 10 hospitals with the lowest rates of stent overuse in the U.S. from 2019-21. For this list, only general hospitals with above-average volume of total stents were included.
Magnolia Regional Health Center in Corinth, Miss. — 1.24%
Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center — 1.58%
Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara (Calif.) Medical Center — 3.71%
HCA Florida Northwest Hospital in Margate — 3.89%
Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y. — 5.41%
Centra Lynchburg (Va.) General Hospital — 5.69%
Grand Strand Medical Center in Myrtle Beach, S.C. — 6.10%
Rhode Island Hospital in Providence — 6.23%
Mount Carmel East in Columbus, Ohio — 7.05%
South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass. — 7.75%
See the list of hospitals with the highest rate of stent overuse here.