The characteristics of patients frequently admitted to academic medical centers in the United States.

Background: The recent intense attention to hospital readmissions and their implications for quality, safety, and reimbursement necessitates understanding specific subsets of readmitted patients. Frequently admitted patients, defined as patients who are admitted 5 or more times within 1 year, may have some distinguishing characteristics that require novel solutions.

Methods: A comprehensive administrative database (University HealthSystem Consortium's Clinical Data Base/Resource Manager) was analyzed to identify demographic, social, and clinical characteristics of frequently admitted patients in 101 US academic medical centers.

Governance practices and performance in US academic medical centers.

Recognition of the complex nature of modern health care delivery has led to interest in investigating the ways in which various factors, including governance structures and practices, influence health care quality. In this study, the chief executive officers (CEOs) of US academic medical centers were surveyed to elicit their perceptions of board structures, activities, and attitudes reflecting 6 widely identified governance best practices; the relationship between use of these practices and organizational performance, based on the University HealthSystem Consortium's Quality & Accountability rankings, was assessed. High-performing hospitals showed greater use of all 6 practices, but the strongest evidence supported a focus on board member education and development, the rigorous use of performance measures to guide quality improvement, and systematic board self-assessment processes.

How Accurate is the AHRQ Patient Safety Indicator for Hospital-Acquired Pressure Ulcer in a National Sample of Records?

In 2008, we conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study to determine the test characteristics of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality patient safety indicator (PSI) for hospital-acquired pressure ulcer (PU). We sampled 1,995 inpatient records that met PSI 3 criteria and 4,007 records assigned to 14 DRGs with the highest empirical rates of PSI 3, which did not meet PSI 3 criteria, from 32 U.S.

The reliability of AHRQ Common Format Harm Scales in rating patient safety events.

Objectives: A study was conducted to determine the reliability of Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) Common Format Harm Scale versions 1.1 and 1.2 in rating patient safety events among users of the UHC Patient Safety Net, a Web-based incident reporting tool.