BACKGROUND: It is a widely held belief that detailed risk-adjustment is always necessary in
comparative reports of surgical performance. We sought to evaluate the importance of risk …

Background: Hospitals are ranked based on risk-adjusted measures of postoperative
mortality, but definitions differ about which deaths following surgery should be included …

BACKGROUND: The American College of Surgeons' National Surgical Quality Improvement
Program (ACS NSQIP) will soon be reporting procedure-specific outcomes, and hopes to …

Background: Risk adjustment is central to the generation of health outcome report cards. It is
unclear, however, whether risk adjustment should be based on standard logistic regression …

The need for hospitals and surgeons to systematically track the quality of surgical care they
provide has never been stronger. Effective measurement is, of course, essential for targeting …

OBJECTIVES. The relative quality of hospital care often is judged by comparing risk-
adjusted rates of adverse outcomes. This study evaluated whether hospital quality …

Objective.—To determine whether hospital rankings based on complication rates provide
the same information as hospital rankings based on mortality rates. Design.—A retrospective …

Background: The National Veterans Affairs Surgical Risk Study was designed to collect
reliable, valid data on patient risk and outcomes for major surgery in the Veterans Health …

BACKGROUND: There is great interest in efficiently evaluating health care quality, but there
is controversy over the use of administrative versus clinical data methods. We sought to …

In 1986, Congress passed a law mandating that quality of surgical care in VA hospitals be
determined by comparing outcomes to “national averages.” 1 Unfortunately, those national …