Massachusetts public health officials are monitoring the heart program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center after discovering the hospital had a high death rate in 2009 for a small group of patients who had emergency cardiac catheterization. An analysis of mortality data for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2009, showed that 13 of 93 patients who underwent the procedure died, the hospital said. Beth Israel Deaconess's mortality rate -- after adjusting for how ill the patients were -- was 5.82%, compared with 5.12% for hospitals statewide, according to state public health officials. The hospital's mortality rate for the 1,039 nonemergency cardiac catheterization patients in 2009 was average.
