This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related letter  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Medical Practice  • Health Policy  • Quality of Care  • Patient Safety/ Medical Error  • Statistics and Research Methods  • Prognosis/ Outcomes  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Leslie P. Kernisan, MD; Sei J. Lee, MD, MAS; W. John Boscardin, PhD; C. Seth Landefeld, MD; R. Adams Dudley, MD, MBA

JAMA. 2009;301(13):1341-1348.

Context  The Leapfrog Hospital Survey allows hospitals to self-report the steps they have taken toward implementing the Safe Practices for Better Healthcare endorsed by the National Quality Forum. The Leapfrog Group currently ranks hospital performance on the safe practices initiative by quartiles and presents this information to the public on its Web site. It is unknown how well a hospital's resulting Safe Practices Score (SPS) correlates with outcomes such as inpatient mortality.

Objective  To determine the relationship between hospitals' SPSs and risk-adjusted inpatient mortality rates.

Design, Setting, and Participants  Observational analysis of discharge data for all urban US hospitals completing the 2006 safe practices initiative and identifiable in the Nationwide Inpatient Sample. Leapfrog provided an SPS for each hospital as well as 3 alternative scores based on shorter versions of the original survey. Hierarchical logistic regression was used to determine the relationship between quartiles of SPS and risk-adjusted inpatient mortality, after adjusting for hospital discharge volume and teaching status. Subgroup analyses were performed using data from patients older than 65 years and patients with 5% or greater expected mortality risk.

Main Outcome Measures  Inpatient risk-adjusted mortality by quartiles of survey score.

Results  Of 1075 hospitals completing the 2006 Safe Practices Survey, 155 (14%) were identifiable in the National Inpatient Sample (1 772 064 discharges). Raw observed mortality in the primary sample was 2.09%. Fully adjusted mortality rates by quartile of SPS, from lowest to highest, were 1.97% (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.78%-2.18%), 2.04% (95% CI, 1.84%-2.25%), 1.96% (95% CI, 1.77%-2.16%), and 2.00% (95% CI, 1.80%-2.22%) (P = .99 for linear trend). Results were similar in the subgroup analyses. None of the 3 alternative survey scores was associated with risk-adjusted inpatient mortality, although P values for linear trends were lower (.80, .20, and .11).

Conclusion  In this sample of hospitals that completed the 2006 Safe Practices Survey, survey scores were not significantly associated with risk-adjusted inpatient mortality.

Author Affiliations: Divisions of Geriatrics (Drs Kernisan, Lee, Boscardin, and Landefeld) and Biostatistics (Dr Boscardin) and Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (Dr Dudley), University of California, San Francisco; National VA Quality Scholars Program (Drs Kernisan, Lee, and Landefeld) and Health Services Research Enhancement Award Program (Drs Lee, Boscardin, and Landefeld), San Francisco VA Medical Center, San Francisco, California; and Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Dr Landefeld), Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED LETTER

Hospital Mortality and Leapfrog Hospital Survey Results
Peter B. Angood and Helen Burstin
JAMA. 2009;302(6):625-626.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

RELATED ARTICLE

A New Strategy to Improve Quality: Rewarding Actions Rather Than Measures
Rachel M. Werner and Robert McNutt
JAMA. 2009;301(13):1375-1377.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Hospital Mortality and Leapfrog Hospital Survey Results
Angood and Burstin
JAMA 2009;302:625-626.
FULL TEXT