Provider profiling and quality improvement efforts in coronary artery bypass graft surgery: the effect on short-term mortality among Medicare beneficiaries.

Context: In the last decade, a few states or regions in the United States have initiated efforts to publicly disseminate coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery outcomes and/or formally initiate quality improvement programs for CABG surgery.

Objective: To compare CABG mortality rates and changes in CABG mortality rates in regions with quality improvement/public dissemination efforts with the remainder of the country.

Design, Setting, And Patients: Medicare data from 1994 to 1999 were used to develop a logistic regression model that predicts patient mortality for CABG surgery on the basis of preoperative patient risk factors and region of the country.