Here are seven findings on quality and patient safety variability among healthcare providers from the past month, beginning with the most recent.
1. While teaching hospitals have higher mortality rates than non-teaching hospitals, they also perform riskier procedures on patients who often have pre-existing conditions, according to a study in Spine.
2. Hospitals vary greatly in their use of surveillance, testing and infection control strategies for Clostridium difficile, according to a study in the American Journal of Infection Control.
3. There is wide variation in wound classification between surgeons, operating room nurses and National Surgical Quality Improvement Program reviewers, according to a study in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
4. Massachusetts hospitals that were publicly identified as having higher-than-expected mortality rates for certain heart patients may subsequently avoid high-risk patients, according to a study in Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Interventions.
5. Hospitals with a higher teaching intensity showed higher readmission and lower mortality rates than hospitals at lower teaching intensities, according to a study in Medical Care.
6. Ventilator-associated pneumonia is more common in small community hospitals than in medium and large community hospitals, according to a study in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
7. There are substantial state-to-state variations in the incidence of elective versus emergent bowel surgery, according to a study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.