Quality of care provided to individual patients in US hospitals: results from an analysis of national Hospital Quality Alliance data.
BACKGROUND
There is little national data on the characteristics of patients who receive high quality inpatient care defined as either the receipt of all applicable processes (all-or-none performance) or the proportion of applicable processes received during their hospitalization.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the quality of care provided to patients hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure or pneumonia, to describe variations in quality by patient and hospital characteristics, and the sensitivity of all-or-none performance to the number and type of processes.


METHODS
Retrospective analysis of previously unavailable Hospital Quality Alliance patient-level data on 2.3 million individuals receiving care in non-federal US hospitals in 2005.


METHODS
The proportion of patients who received all applicable care processes, and the mean proportion of applicable processes received by hospitalized patients.
Department of Medicine, MGH Institute for Health Policy, 50 Staniford Street, Boston, MA 02114, USA. cvogeli@partners.org
Christine
C
Vogeli
Raymond
R
Kang
Mary Beth
MB
Landrum
Romana
R
Hasnain-Wynia
Joel S
JS
Weissman
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006761:Hospitals / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000628:therapy; D011014:Pneumonia / Q000628:therapy; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult