New Jersey’s cardiac surgery hospitals are required to report data to the Department of Health on each patient undergoing open heart surgery. The Open Heart Surgery Registry contains this patient-level data from 1994 to 2023. Starting in 2024, all New Jersey cardiac surgery centers are to report patient level data to the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) Adult Cardiac Surgery Database.
Hospitals report demographic data on patients -- such as age, sex and zip code -- as well as information on insurance coverage, name of hospital and surgeon. They also provide information on medical history and risk factors known to affect a patient’s chance of surviving the operation.
This data are used to create risk-adjusted mortality rates for each hospital and surgeon performing one common type of open heart surgery -- coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG). All data are risk-adjusted to give “extra credit” to hospitals and surgeons treating sicker patients.
Each year, the findings were published in the cardiac surgery report, available below.
