Intensive Care Network Podcasts

Because of widespread recognition that surgical quality varies widely, there is growing demand from patients, providers, and payers for better measures of surgical outcomes. Risk-adjusted mortality rates are a simple and reliable measure of surgical quality and have been used to good effect in cardiac surgery. One way to improve outcomes measurement in non-cardiac surgery is to combine several operations together when assessing hospital mortality rates. While previous studies show relatively weak relationships between outcomes for different medical diagnoses, there is some reason to believe these relationships may be stronger in surgery. Many high-risk operations are dependent on the same hospital-level resources, staffing, and processes of care. Findings suggest that procedure-specific mortality is strongly related to a hospital’s mortality with other operations. In some cases, mortality with other operations is a better predictor than other proxy measures of quality, including hospital volume. The main res