Although death rates are lower in the US after 30 days, they are similar at the one-year mark.

Heart failure -- a condition in which the ventricles, or lower chambers of the heart, are not able to pump blood effectively -- is the most common cause of hospitalization for individuals aged 65 and older in both countries.

Different Healthcare Systems

The United States and Canada have different methods of financing and providing healthcare. Healthcare expenditure per person is significantly higher in the US than in Canada. The US market-oriented system with limited governmental control contrasts sharply with Canada's single-payer system, which covers most physician and hospital services and prescription medications.

Canadian budgetary restraints have resulted in limited access to physician specialists and invasive cardiac procedures, the article notes.

Dennis T. Ko, MD, of the University of Toronto and colleagues compared processes of care and 30-day and one-year risk-standardized mortality rates among 28,521 US Medicare beneficiaries and 8,180 similarly aged patients in Ontario who were hospitalized with heart failure from 1998 to 2001.

"More US patients underwent left ventricular ejection fraction assessment (a test to evaluate the pumping action of the lower chambers of the heart) during hospitalization compared with Canadian patients (61.2 percent vs. 41.7 percent)," the authors write.

Use of Medications

The authors also looked at the use of medications commonly prescribed for heart patients. "At discharge, patients in the United States were prescribed beta-blockers more frequently (28.7 percent vs. 25.4 percent), but angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors less frequently (54.3 percent vs. 63.4 percent)," they report.

The death rate at 30 days was significantly lower for US patients -- 8.9 percent compared with 10.7 percent for Canadian patients. But at one year, the death rates for patients in both countries were similar -- 32.2 percent vs. 32.3 percent.

"In conclusion, we found that HF patients hospitalized in the United States had significantly better short-term mortality but equivalent long-term mortality compared with a sample of HF patients hospitalized in Canada," say the authors. "Further studies are needed to explore the reasons underlying this difference in outcomes and to gain additional insights to improve the care and outcomes of HF patients in both countries."