title: Identifying potentially preventable complications using a present on admission indicator.
abstract: This article describes the development of Potentially Preventable Complications (PPCs), a new method that uses a present on admission (POA) indicator to identify in-hospital complications among secondary diagnoses that arise after admission. Analyses that used PPCs to obtain risk-adjusted complication rates for California hospitals showed that (1) the POA indicator is essential for identifying complications, (2) frequency of complications varies by reason for admission and severity of illness (SOI), (3) complications are associated with higher hospital charges, longer lengths of stay, and increased mortality, and (4) hospital complication rates tend to be stable over time.
authors.affiliation: Yale University School of Medicine, USA. jshughes@mmm.com
authors.forename: John S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Hughes
authors.forename: Richard F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Averill
authors.forename: Norbert I
authors.initials: NI
authors.lastname: Goldfield
authors.forename: James C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Gay
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Muldoon
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: McCullough
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xiang
mesh_terms: D002140:California; D006801:Humans; D010343:Patient Admission; D010351:Patient Discharge; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D017751:Safety Management; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014218:Triage / Q000379:methods*