Do Patients in Hospitals that Do Higher Numbers of Certain Procedures Have Lower Mortality Rates?
• Recent research* suggests that the outcomes, or results, of certain procedures are related to how many of them are performed in a hospital. These procedures often require high-technology support; but the exact nature of this “volume-to-outcome” relationship is not well understood. • Hospitals that perform more than a specific number of certain procedures have fewer in-hospital deaths for those particular procedures. This “threshold number” varies with the type of procedure. • For example, hospitals where at least 500 CABG procedures are performed each year have significantly lower mortality rates for CABG than hospitals performing fewer than 500. Hospitals doing nine or more heart transplantations annually have fewer in-hospital deaths for this procedure than hospitals doing fewer than nine.
