A new Harvard study in the New England Journal of Medicine found wide disparities among four common measures of hospital mortality rates, putting into question their use to measure hospital quality, according to a release from Harvard Medical School.
The four mortality measures are used to gauge hospital quality in provider report cards and may be used in upcoming implementation of accountable care organizations and other payment systems.
In the study, researchers found that that each metric excluded some discharges from its calculations and there were wide variations, ranging from exclusion of 5 percent of all discharges to exclusion of 72 percent.
One metric designated 28 hospitals as having higher-than-expected mortality in 2006, but 12 of those hospitals were classified as having lower-than-expected mortality by at least one other metric.
Read the Harvard Medical School release on quality measures.
Read move coverage of mortality rates and use of quality metrics:
- Study: Hospital Compare Measures May Not Correlate With Hospital Quality
- Mortality Rate for Heart Surgery Fell by 19% in California Hospitals
- Hospitals Show Quality Gains in Joint Commission Report
The four mortality measures are used to gauge hospital quality in provider report cards and may be used in upcoming implementation of accountable care organizations and other payment systems.
In the study, researchers found that that each metric excluded some discharges from its calculations and there were wide variations, ranging from exclusion of 5 percent of all discharges to exclusion of 72 percent.
One metric designated 28 hospitals as having higher-than-expected mortality in 2006, but 12 of those hospitals were classified as having lower-than-expected mortality by at least one other metric.
Read the Harvard Medical School release on quality measures.
Read move coverage of mortality rates and use of quality metrics:
- Study: Hospital Compare Measures May Not Correlate With Hospital Quality
- Mortality Rate for Heart Surgery Fell by 19% in California Hospitals
- Hospitals Show Quality Gains in Joint Commission Report