Neurosurg Focus
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OBJECT The health care landscape is rapidly shifting to incentivize quality of care rather than quantity of care. Quality and outcomes registry platforms lie at the center of all emerging evidence-driven reform models and will be used to inform decision makers in health care delivery. Obtaining real-world registry outcomes data from patients 12 months after spine surgery remains a challenge. ⋯ CONCLUSIONS In a prospective registry, patient-reported measures of treatment effectiveness obtained at 3 months correlated with 12-month measures overall in aggregate, but did not reliably predict 12-month outcome at the patient level. Many patients who do not benefit from surgery by 3 months do so by 12 months, and, conversely, many patients reporting meaningful improvement by 3 months report loss of benefit at 12 months. Prospective longitudinal spine outcomes registries need to span at least 12 months to identify effective versus noneffective patient care.
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OBJECT The Milan Complexity Scale-a new practical grading scale designed to estimate the risk of neurological clinical worsening after performing surgery for tumor removal-is presented. METHODS A retrospective study was conducted on all elective consecutive surgical procedures for tumor resection between January 2012 and December 2014 at the Second Division of Neurosurgery at Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta of Milan. A prospective database dedicated to reporting complications and all clinical and radiological data was retrospectively reviewed. ⋯ Finally, a grid was developed to show the risk of worsening after surgery for each total score: scores higher than 3 are suggestive of worse clinical outcome. CONCLUSIONS Through the evaluation of the 5 aforementioned parameters-the Big Five-the Milan Complexity Scale enables neurosurgeons to estimate the risk of a negative clinical course after brain tumor surgery and share these data with the patient. Furthermore, the Milan Complexity Scale could be used for research and educational purposes and better health system management.
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OBJECT Lumbar spine surgery has been demonstrated to be efficacious for many degenerative spine conditions. However, there is wide variability in outcome after spine surgery at the individual patient level. All stakeholders in spine care will benefit from identification of the unique patient or disease subgroups that are least likely to benefit from surgery, are prone to costly complications, and have increased health care utilization. ⋯ For prediction of a complication, readmission, inpatient rehabilitation, and return to work, AUC values ranged 0.72-0.84 for development and 0.79-0.84 for validation study. CONCLUSIONS A novel prediction model utilizing both clinical data and patient interview inputs explained the majority of variation in outcome observed after lumbar spine surgery and reliably predicted 12-month improvement in physical disability, return to work, major complications, readmission, and need for inpatient rehabilitation for individual patients. Application of these models may allow clinicians to offer spine surgery specifically to those who are most likely to benefit and least likely to incur complications and excess costs.
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OBJECT Although the length of hospital stay is often used as a measure of quality of care, data evaluating the predictors of extended hospital stay after craniotomy for tumor are limited. The goals of this study were to use multivariate regression to examine which preoperative characteristics and postoperative complications predict a prolonged hospital stay and to assess the impact of length of stay on unplanned hospital readmission. METHODS Data were extracted from the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) database from 2007 to 2013. ⋯ Extended hospital stay was not associated with differential odds of an unplanned hospital readmission (OR 0.97, 95% CI 0.89%-1.06%, p = 0.55). CONCLUSIONS In this NSQIP analysis that evaluated patients who underwent craniotomy for tumor, much of the variance in hospital stay was attributable to baseline patient characteristics, suggesting length of stay may be an imperfect proxy for quality. Additionally, longer hospitalizations were not found to be associated with differential rates of unplanned readmission.
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Quality measurement and public reporting are intended to facilitate targeted outcome improvement, practice-based learning, shared decision making, and effective resource utilization. However, regulatory implementation has created a complex network of reporting requirements for physicians and medical practices. These include Medicare's Physician Quality Reporting System, Electronic Health Records Meaningful Use, and Value-Based Payment Modifier programs. ⋯ Neurosurgery has been at the forefront of these developments, leveraging the experience of the National Neurosurgery Quality and Outcomes Database to create one of the first specialty-specific QCDRs. Recent legislative reform has continued to change this landscape and has fueled optimism that registries (including QCDRs) and other specialty-driven quality measures will be a prominent feature of federal and private sector quality improvement initiatives. These physician- and patient-driven methods will allow neurosurgery to underscore the value of interventions, contribute to the development of sustainable health care solutions, and actively participate in meaningful quality initiatives for the benefit of the patients served.