AI Article Synopsis
- A study analyzed variations in risk-adjusted outcomes for emergency general surgery (EGS) across hospitals, hypothesizing that significant differences would be found similar to other surgical quality programs.* -
- The research reviewed data from over 2.6 million patients across 943 hospitals in 2010, revealing that 15% of hospitals had low mortality rates while 23% had high mortality rates, with low mortality hospitals performing significantly better.* -
- The findings suggest a need for an EGS quality improvement program to address these disparities, as up to 16,812 additional deaths could be prevented if high and average mortality hospitals matched the performance of low mortality hospitals.*
Article Abstract
Background: National Surgical Quality Improvement Program and Trauma Quality Improvement Program have shown variations in risk-adjusted outcomes across hospitals. Our study hypothesis was that there would be similar variation in risk-adjusted outcomes of emergency general surgery (EGS) patients.
Methods: We undertook a retrospective analysis of the National Inpatient Sample database for 2010. Patients with EGS diseases were identified using American Association for the Surgery of Trauma definitions. A hierarchical logistic regression model was used to model in-hospital mortality, accounting for patient characteristics, including age, sex, race, ethnicity, insurance type, and comorbidities. Predicted-to-expected mortality ratios with 90% confidence intervals were used to identify hospitals as low mortality (ratio significantly lower than 1), high mortality (ratio significantly higher than 1), or average mortality (ratio overlapping 1).
Results: Nationwide, 2,640,725 patients with EGS diseases were treated at 943 hospitals in 2010. About one-sixth of the hospitals (139, 15%) were low mortality, a quarter were high mortality (221, 23%), and the rest were average mortality. Mortality ratio at low mortality hospitals was almost four times lower than that of high mortality hospitals (0.57 vs. 2.03, p < 0.0001). If high and average mortality hospitals performed at the same level as low mortality hospitals, we estimate 16,812 (55%) more deaths than expected.
Conclusion: There are significant variations in risk-adjusted outcomes of EGS patients across hospitals, with several thousand higher than expected number of deaths nationwide. Based on the success of National Surgical Quality Improvement Program and Trauma Quality Improvement Program, we recommend establishing EGS quality improvement program for risk-adjusted benchmarking of hospitals for EGS patients.
Level Of Evidence: Care management, level III.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/TA.0000000000001755 | DOI Listing |
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