Teaching hospitals found to have high rates of serious complications

Major teaching hospitals were nearly 10 times as likely as other hospitals to be rated as having high rates of serious complications among Medicare patients, according to Kaiser Health News.

For the analysis, Kaiser examined Medicare data that has recently been posted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid’s Hospital Compare website.  The data was obtained through hospital billing records.  The analysis found that 190 of 3,330 hospitals had high levels of complications.  Of those, 82 were major teaching hospitals. 

The data is raising concerns by hospital leaders nationwide.  Some note that the patient safety indicators used for the comparison are not well risk-adjusted and not very well validated, and that the billing data was not intended to be used for this purpose.  Others note that the high rates found at some teaching hospitals may be due to better documenting at teaching hospitals, or in some cases, erroneous billing. 

(Sources: Kaiser Health News, http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org, February 13, 2012; The Advisory Board Daily Briefing, http://advisory.com, February 14, 2012)