Advocate Children's Heart Institute Earns Top Rating

For the third consecutive year, the Advocate Children’s Heart Institute has earned the highest national quality rating – three stars – for its pediatric cardiovascular surgery program from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS).

Advocate Children’s Heart Institute is part of Advocate Children’s Hospital, with two main campuses in Oak Lawn and Park Ridge.

“It is gratifying to see that the drive of our team together with the combination of medicine, science and advanced technology available to us has had the result of lowering risks for our patients,” said Michel Ilbawi, M.D. said in a news release, the surgical director, Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgery at Advocate Children’s Hospital.

“To achieve the STS rating for a third time demonstrates our commitment to the health of the many exceptionally vulnerable babies and children we care for and, most importantly, that we are successful in helping so many children live healthier lives,” Dr. Ilbawi added.

The STS 3-Star rating places Advocate Children’s Heart Institute among the top programs in the United States and Canada for patient quality. In 2015, only ten out of 117 children’s hospitals that submitted data to the society received three stars for excellence. The public reporting of data to STS ensures parents have the objective information needed to judge pediatric cardiac surgery program quality and care delivered at individual hospitals.

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons uses a variety of quality measures, including risk-adjusted mortality rates and length of stay in the hospital. Advocate Children’s Heart Institute is one of the largest pediatric cardiac programs in the midwest performing 477 pediatric cardiovascular surgeries, over 16,000 total echocardiography procedures and over 1,800 total fetal echo procedures a year.

Advocate Children’s 2015 pediatric cardiovascular surgery survival rate is 97.7 percent against a STS national survival baseline of 96.9 percent.

The STS also examines the complexity of operations hospitals perform. Advocate Children’s Heart Institute excels in championing innovative solutions that result in positive outcomes for the most complex pediatric heart problems. These include congenital heart problems such as hypoplastic left heart and other complex heart defects that most hospitals in the region are unable able to treat.

“The team at Advocate Children’s Heart Institute cares for children with heart issues with exceptional compassion,” said David Roberson, M.D., medical director, Pediatric Cardiology at Advocate Children’s Heart Institute.

“To have earned the highest national rating from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons for the third time in a row is evidence of the commitment of our team of pediatric cardiovascular surgeons and cardiologists to provide the safest and highest quality care,” Dr. Roberson said in a news release.

The cardiac surgery program at Advocate Children’s Hospitals is among the largest in the midwest and its team of specialists perform procedures that cover the entire spectrum of pediatric heart care from the simplest to the most complex pediatric cardiac conditions.