Recognizing Differences in Hospital Quality Performance for Pediatric Inpatient Care.

Background: Hospital quality-of-care measures are publicly reported to inform consumer choice and stimulate quality improvement. The number of hospitals and states with enough pediatric hospital discharges to detect worse-than-average inpatient care remains unknown.

Methods: This study was a retrospective analysis of hospital discharges for children aged 0 to 17 years from 3974 hospitals in 44 states in the 2009 Kids' Inpatient Database.