Teaching hospitals may give better care than conventional hospitals

From Medical Correspondent Eileen O'Connor

BOSTON (CNN) -- If you or a loved one were having a heart attack and could choose between a teaching hospital or a conventional hospital, two new studies suggest the teaching hospital would be the better choice.

Because they have more doctors, with more access to the latest information, teaching hospitals kept alive more people with heart attacks and other major illnesses, according to a study in the latest New England Journal of Medicine.

The advantage for heart attack victims was simple -- quicker application of aspirin and beta blockers, the standard treatments at both teaching and non-teaching hospitals.

The journal's editor, Dr. Jerome Kassirer, believes the studies show that having more doctors at non-teaching hospitals could significantly improve care.

"There are many more people in teaching hospitals than there are in non-teaching hospitals," Kassirer says. "There is a lot of consultation that goes on."

However, the studies ranked non-teaching hospitals better at supporting patients emotionally.

"Teaching hospitals are big places," Kassirer says. "So it's much more difficult to inject that kind of behavior."

Also, care costs more at teaching hospitals -- about 5 percent more for Medicare recipients.

Insurance lobbying groups cite their own studies showing that HMOs send almost as many patients to teaching hospitals as conventional insurance plans do. But they do have cost concerns.

Defenders of the major teaching hospitals say they have cut some costs, but that cutting too much would damage their mission, which is training good doctors.

"It's hard to measure in dollars and cents, but I think it's recognizable in the standard of care available in the United States, which is the envy of the world," says Dr. Jordan Cohen of the Association of American Medical Colleges.