Interpreting hospital death rates

Interpreting cancer survival rates.

Hospital readmissions and death from Heart Failure--rates still alarming.

BACKGROUND Patients who require hospitalization because of decompensated HF represent a group of the most seriously ill individuals who evolve with high mortality and hospital readmission rates. OBJECTIVES We sought to evaluate the current natural course of HF by analyzing mortality and readmission rates in this new era of neurohormonal blockage. METHODS We followed the progress of 263 pati...

Declining Out-of-Hospital Sudden Coronary Death Rates

B eginning at the turn of the 20th century, death rates attributed to coronary heart disease (CHD) in the United States rose continually, reaching epidemic proportions by the mid-1960s. Since that time, the mortality rate due to CHD has markedly decreased.'-4 Internationally, inconsistent trends in CHD mortality rates have taken place. Favorable declines in these death rates have been seen sinc...

Death rates versus deaths.

To the Editor: In the October 24, 2000, issue of Circulation, Morrow et al1 present a simple, validated scoring system (1 through 14 points) using clinical variables to measure the risk of mortality after ST-elevation myocardial infarction. In this system, risk rises progressively with higher scores and is maximal for a composite score .8. The authors state that a score .6 identifies a segment ...

Hospital Readmission Rates

Medicare penalises hospitals that have higher than expected rates of readmissions within 30 days of discharge. The penalties are imposed to ensure hospitals make en effort to improve quality of care and focus more on proper discharge planning. Medicare levied penalties accumulating to $428 million on 2600 hospitals in 2014. The largest penalties were imposed on hospitals that serve disadvantage...