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Background: In-hospital mortality measures, which are widely used to assess hospital quality, are not based on a standardized follow-up period and may systematically favor hospitals with shorter lengths of stay (LOSs). Objective: To assess the agreement between performance measures of U.S. hospitals by using risk-standardized in-hospital and 30-day mortality rates. Design: Observational study. Setting: Nonfederal acute care hospitals in the United States with at least 30 admissions for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure (HF), and pneumonia from 2004 to 2006. Patients: Medicare fee-for-service patients admitted for AMI, HF, or pneumonia from 2004 to 2006. Measurements: The primary outcomes were in-hospital and 30- day risk-standardized mortality rates (RSMRs). Results: Included patients comprised 718 508 admissions to 3135 hospitals for AMI, 1 315 845 admissions to 4209 hospitals for HF, and 1 415 237 admissions to 4498 hospitals for pneumonia. The hospital-level mean patient LOS varied across hospitals for each condition, ranging from 2.3 to 13.7 days for AMI, 3.5 to 11.9 days for HF, and 3.8 to 14.8 days for pneumonia. The mean RSMR differences (30-day RSMR minus in-hospital RSMR) were 5.3% (SD, 1.3) for AMI, 6.0% (SD, 1.3) for HF, and 5.7% (SD, 1.4) for pneumonia; distributions varied widely across hospitals. Performance classifications differed between the in-hospital and 30-day models for 257 hospitals (8.2%) for AMI, 456 (10.8%) for HF, and 662 (14.7%) for pneumonia. Hospital mean LOS was positively correlated with in-hospital RSMRs for all 3 conditions. Limitation: Medicare claims data were used for risk adjustment. Conclusion: In-hospital mortality measures provide a different assessment of hospital performance than 30-day mortality and are biased in favor of hospitals with shorter LOSs. Primary Funding Source: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The association between hospital volume and the death rate for patients who are hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, or pneumonia remains unclear. It is also not known whether a volume threshold for such an association exists. Methods: We conducted cross-sectional analyses of data from Medicare administrative claims for all fee-for-service beneficiaries who were hospitalized between 2004 and 2006 in acute care hospitals in the United States for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, or pneumonia. Using hierarchical logistic-regression models for each condition, we estimated the change in the odds of death within 30 days associated with an increase of 100 patients in the annual hospital volume. Analyses were adjusted for patients' risk factors and hospital characteristics. Bootstrapping procedures were used to estimate 95% confidence intervals to identify the condition-specific volume thresholds above which an increased volume was not associated with reduced mortality. Results: There were 734,972 hospitalizations for acute myocardial infarction in 4128 hospitals, 1,324,287 for heart failure in 4679 hospitals, and 1,418,252 for pneumonia in 4673 hospitals. An increased hospital volume was associated with reduced 30-day mortality for all conditions (P<0.001 for all comparisons). For each condition, the association between volume and outcome was attenuated as the hospital's volume increased. For acute myocardial infarction, once the annual volume reached 610 patients (95% confidence interval [CI], 539 to 679), an increase in the hospital volume by 100 patients was no longer significantly associated with reduced odds of death. The volume threshold was 500 patients (95% CI, 433 to 566) for heart failure and 210 patients (95% CI, 142 to 284) for pneumonia. Conclusions: Admission to higher-volume hospitals was associated with a reduction in mortality for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia, although there was a volume threshold above which an increased condition-specific hospital volume was no longer significantly associated with reduced mortality. N Engl J Med 2010;362:1110-8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which investigates the survival impact of regionalization of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) care on percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) hospitals in the U.S. Risk-standardized mortality rates (RSMRs) between PCI hospitals and non-PCI hospitals within the same health care regions were analyzed. The study suggests that regionalizing AMI care to PCI hospitals can reduce mortality rates, however, survival outcomes varies across the regions.