FirstHealth of the Carolinas has once again earned a distinguished three-star rating from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) for its patient care and outcomes in isolated coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures.

The rating represents the highest category of quality and places FirstHealth’s Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery program among the elite for heart bypass surgery in the United States and Canada.

Peter Ellman, M.D., FACS, senior cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon at FirstHealth, said that receiving the STS three-star rating for the second time is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the heart care team.

“We always say that we provide world-class heart care for people in the Sandhills, and we are thrilled to know that objective data supports our claim,” Ellman said in a press release. “This distinction is based on four years of data for every patient who had coronary artery bypass grafting in our program. To achieve this, a program must demonstrate excellence with consistency over a long period. It is very difficult to accomplish this rating, and it only happens when you have a superb team working together. I think one of our greatest strengths is the fact that we do not have a lot of turnover with staff, and working relationships that are established over years leads to great patient care and the ability to achieve this outstanding rating from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.”

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 U.S. 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.

The STS National Database was established in 1989 as an initiative for quality improvement and patient safety among cardiothoracic surgeons. The Database includes four components: the Adult Cardiac Surgery Database (ACSD), the Congenital Heart Surgery Database (CHSD), the General

Thoracic Surgery Database (GTSD) and the mechanical circulatory support database (Intermacs). The STS ACSD houses approximately 6.9 million surgical records and gathers information from more than 3,800 participating physicians, including surgeons and anesthesiologists from more than 90% of groups that perform heart surgery in the U.S. STS public reporting online enables STS ACSD participants to voluntarily report to each other and the public their heart surgery scores and star ratings.

“Participation in this database is completely voluntary. While most cardiac programs participate, not all do. Since our program was established in 1992 by Dr. John Krahnert, we have participated because we have always wanted to strive for excellence in the program, and participation in the database makes it fully transparent to the world the quality of our program,” Ellman continued in the press release. “You cannot improve something without measuring it, and thus it has been critical for us to be able to know on a national level compared to like-sized programs where we shine, and perhaps where we need to make improvements.”