WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs said Friday that it’s not as good at taking care of heart attack patients as it thinks it is – or as it should be.

Heart patients treated at VA hospitals have consistently higher mortality rates than patients of similar age and in roughly similar health who are treated at non-VA institutions. A larger proportion of the veterans die in the first month after suffering a heart attack, and a larger proportion of the survivors die over the next three years.

Those were two key findings of a new study, which also found VA patients undergo cardiac catheterization – a key step in assessing the seriousness of a person’s heart disease – less often than patients treated in non-VA hospitals. And they have only about half the likelihood of undergoing angioplasty or bypass surgery, two procedures that can often extend life.