The study, led by Laurent G. Glance, MD, found, specifically, that high quality hospitals have death rates that are 34 percent lower, while spending nearly 22 percent less on trauma patient care than average-quality hospitals, suggesting high quality can coexist with lower cost.
The reason is not clear, though. One possible explanation is that higher quality hospitals may have fewer patient complications compared with lower quality hospitals. Potentially preventable complications have been shown to result in greater rates of death, hospital length of stay and cost, so fewer complications could translate into cost savings.
Researchers in the study analyzed data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project’s Nationwide Inpatient Sample, focusing on 67,124 patients admitted to 73 trauma centers across the country in 2006.
Researchers determined hospital quality by comparing a hospital’s predicted mortality rate to its actual mortality rate. Information on the injury severity, age, gender and pre-existing illness of a hospital’s patients is used to estimate a hospital’s predicted mortality rate. Trauma centers whose actual mortality rates are significantly greater than their expected mortality rates are classified as low-quality hospitals. For high-quality hospitals, actual mortality rates are significantly lower than expected mortality rates.
Read the release on trauma care.
