While some reports in the media today said Lehigh Regional Medical Center was behind its competitors in the mortality rates of heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia, a chart from the government’s Compare Hospitals website shows that the Lehigh hospital is still within national guidelines.

Copy this entire URL address to see the charts of comparison: http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov/hospital/search/mortalitygraph.asp?showPopupItems=false&MortalityMeasure=1&MortalityMeasure=2&MortalityMeasure=23&version=default&Type=ZipCode&ZipCode=33936&Hospital=10%7C100107

At this site, you will see easy to read graphs which show the numbers and you will be able to compare them with the numbers of other hospitals in Lee County, all of which are owned by Lee County Health Systems. Lehigh Regional Medical Center is owned by HMA (Health Management Associates).

In each category, there is a line stating that the Lehigh Regional Medical Center’s number is “no different than the U.S. national average rate.” The report says that the hospital is within national guidelines of hospital across the country, too. However, the numbers are slightly above averages.

The slightly higher scores at LRMC don’t make officials at the Lehigh Regional Center happy. Jose Morillo, the hospital’s CEO noted that he became administrator of the hospital in October of 2007. The hospital is improving but he noted that “cultural changes” takes time, he said in the Fort Myers News-Press.

The information in the report which was released last week measures results through June 2008 and that is only eight months into the time that Morillo has been on the job. According to the Internet report, the data collection began in July of 2005.

Morillo also was quoted as saying that the hospital has launched new quality initiatives.

The story, which appeared in the paper on Monday, July 13, carried headlines that the hospital in Lehigh is among the state’s worst in several categories. And in bold headlines said the hospital “lags behind competitors.”