Pennsylvania hospital deaths from 20 common conditions dropped from 5.1 percent in 2002 to 4.2 percent in 2008, according to a newly released performance report from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council.

The single biggest drop in deaths was for patients who had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke.

The readmission rate for the 15 most consistently reported conditions rose for the same period, from 18.3 percent to 19.1 percent in 2008, though the rate has been stable from 2006 to 2008, the most recent data available in the report.

The full report is viewable today at the PHC4 Web site.

According to the report, the nearly 60,000 readmissions due to infections or complications resulted in an additional 350,000 hospital days and $2.5 billion in added charges. The highest readmission rate was for respiratory failure with mechanical ventilation.

Carolyn Scanlan, president and CEO of the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, says the lower death rates show the quality and dedication of hospital staffs.

"The linkage between the significant decline in mortality rates and the slight increase in readmission rates reflects the fact that the quality of care hospitals provide is saving more lives than ever," she said.

"However, many of those surviving patients are the most chronically ill -- and therefore most in need of continuing hospital care." She added that hospitals continue to look at possible causes for readmissions and ways to reduce them.

The report lists hospitals on whether they had "higher than expected," "expected" or "lower than expected" rates of death and readmissions for diagnoses or procedures such as pneumonia, heart attacks, gallbladder removal and hip fractures.

It also lists hospital charges for procedures, although that number does not reflect what is actually paid by insurers or patients. Nor do the three categories always tell the whole story.

With heart attacks, for example, Canonsburg General, Excela Health Westmoreland, Grove City and Indiana Regional each showed higher than expected mortality. But each handled fewer than 100 cases, so even a few unexpected deaths can push them into that category.

Western Pennsylvania Hospital showed higher than expected mortality for heart attacks treated with angioplasty or stent with six deaths. In a letter accompanying the report, interim chief of cardiovascular disease Dr. Venkatraman Srinivasan wrote that "three of the six mortalities identified in the report were not directly related to the procedure."

Butler Memorial was the only other hospital in the area to have higher than expected mortality for the procedure.

The report is based on information submitted by 158 Pennsylvania hospitals between Oct. 1, 2007, and Sept. 30, 2008.