• George J Stukenborg.
• Division of Patient Outcomes, Policy, and Population Health, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA. gstukenborg@virginia.edu
• Med Care. 2011 Aug 1;49(8):744-51.

Background And ObjectiveHeart failure patient mortality rates are a focus of hospital quality assessment. This study examines whether comprehensive use of diagnoses identified as present on admission improves methods for comparing hospital mortality rates.Research DesignCalifornia hospital mortality rates are assessed using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Inpatient Quality Indicator for heart failure, which uses selected diagnoses identified as present on admission. These rates are compared with rates calculated using comprehensive adjustments for diagnoses identified as present on admission. Models are compared to assess the accuracy of classification and to compare differences in hospitals identified with lower or higher than expected mortality.SubjectsThe study included 91,511 discharge records for patients with heart failure from 365 California hospitals for patients discharged in 2007.ResultsEvery aspect of statistical model performance (discrimination, classification, calibration, and explanatory power) was improved by using more comprehensive adjustments for diagnoses identified as present on admission. The number of hospitals originally identified with higher than expected mortality was reduced by 50%.ConclusionsMore comprehensive use of diagnoses identified as present on admission improves the performance of mortality risk adjustment methods, and these improvements meaningfully change the results of hospital mortality rate comparisons.

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