JAMA surgery
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Multicenter Study
Derivation and Validation of a Quality Indicator to Benchmark In-Hospital Complications Among Injury Admissions.
The rate of complications among injury admissions has been estimated to be more than 3 times that observed for general admissions, and complications have been targeted as an important quality-of-care metric. Despite the negative effect of complications on resource use and patient mortality and morbidity, there is no standardized method to benchmark trauma centers in terms of in-hospital complications, to our knowledge. ⋯ We developed a QI to benchmark trauma centers on in-hospital complications among injury admissions. The QI is based on data that are routinely collected in most trauma systems and demonstrates good internal validity. The integration of this QI in trauma quality improvement programs will facilitate the identification of quality problems, the implementation of solutions, and the evaluation of their effectiveness. Therefore, the QI has the potential to lead to reductions in mortality, morbidity, and resource use after injury.