Influence of hospital volume on outcomes for patients with heart failure: Evidence from a Canadian national cohort study

Publication date: Available online 27 May 2018 Source:American Heart Journal Author(s): Finlay A. McAlister, Erik Youngson, Sean van Diepen, Justin A. Ezekowitz, Padma Kaul Although the Get with the Guidelines-Heart Failure (GWTG-HF) group recently reported no association between hospital volume and 30-day outcomes in their registry, GWTG-HF hospitals are self-selected and tend to be higher volume hospitals with active quality improvement departments. Thus, we explored the volume-outcome relationship for HF in an unselected population-based cohort of 241,533 adults admitted with HF as the most responsible diagnosis to any of 591 acute care institutions in Canada– none participate in GWTG-HF. We found inverse associations between volume and in-patient mortality (11.3% in low volume hospitals compared to 9.0% in high volume hospitals, aOR 0.90 [0.80–1.00]) and 30day readmission rates (19.3% in low volume hospitals versus 17.3% in high volume hospitals, aOR 0.91 [0.85–0.97]).

Source: American Heart Journal - May 28, 2018 Category: Cardiology Source Type: research