Failure to rescue, the mortality rate among surgical patients who experience complications, is most problematic at hospitals with high proportions of patients either uninsured or on Medicaid, according to an article appearing in JAMA Surgery.
Researchers studied data from about 46,500 patients who underwent high-risk surgery between 2007 and 2010. Patients had surgery at hospitals with varying percentages of uninsured and Medicaid patients, characterized as low-burden, moderate-burden and high-burden hospitals.
While high-burden hospitals were more likely to be large teaching hospitals with "high levels of technology, sophisticated internal medicine and high ratios of respiratory therapists to beds," patients were 35 percent more likely to experience failure to rescue compared with patients at low-burden hospitals.
Patients at medium-burden hospitals were 15 percent more likely to experience failure to rescue than at low-burden hospitals.
However, researchers ultimately concluded availability of clinical resources in isolation does not explain failure to rescue rates.
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