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Background: Quality of care for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and heart failure (HF) varies across hospitals, but the factors driving variation are incompletely understood. We evaluated the relationship between a hospital's ICU or coronary care unit (CCU) admission rate and quality of care provided to patients with AMI or HF.Methods: A retrospective cohort study of Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized in 2010 with AMI or HF was performed. Hospitals were grouped into quintiles according to their risk- and reliability-adjusted ICU admission rates for AMI or HF. We examined the rates that hospitals failed to deliver standard AMI or HF processes of care (process measure failure rates), 30-day mortality, 30-day readmissions, and Medicare spending after adjusting for patient and hospital characteristics.Results: Hospitals in the lowest quintile had ICU admission rates < 29% for AMI or < 8% for HF. Hospitals in the top quintile had rates > 61% for AMI or > 24% for HF. Hospitals in the highest quintile had higher process measure failure rates for some but not all process measures. Hospitals in the top quintile had greater 30-day mortality (14.8% vs 14.0% [P = .002] for AMI; 11.4% vs 10.6% [P < .001] for HF), but no differences in 30-day readmissions or Medicare spending were seen compared with hospitals in the lowest quintile.Conclusions: Hospitals with the highest rates of ICU admission for patients with AMI or HF delivered lower quality of care and had higher 30-day mortality for these conditions. Hospitals with high ICU use may be targets to improve care delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: Intermediate care (i.e., step-down or progressive care) is an alternative to the intensive care unit (ICU) for patients with moderate severity of illness. The adoption and current use of intermediate care is unknown.Objectives: To characterize trends in intermediate care use among U.S. hospitals.Methods: We examined 135 million acute care hospitalizations among elderly individuals (≥65 yr) enrolled in fee-for-service Medicare (U.S. federal health insurance program) from 1996 to 2010. We identified patients receiving intermediate care as those with intensive care or coronary care room and board charges labeled intermediate ICU.Measurements and Main Results: In 1996, a total of 960 of the 3,425 hospitals providing critical care billed for intermediate care (28%), and this increased to 1,643 of 2,783 hospitals (59%) in 2010 (P < 0.01). Only 8.2% of Medicare hospitalizations in 1996 were billed for intermediate care, but billing steadily increased to 22.8% by 2010 (P < 0.01), whereas the percentage billed for ICU care and ward-only care declined. Patients billed for intermediate care had more acute organ failures diagnoses codes compared with general ward patients (22.4% vs. 15.8%). When compared with patients billed for ICU care, those billed for intermediate care had fewer organ failures (22.4% vs. 43.4%), less mechanical ventilation (0.9% vs. 16.7%), lower mean Medicare spending ($8,514 vs. $18,150), and lower 30-day mortality (5.6% vs. 16.5%) (P < 0.01 for all comparisons).Conclusions: Intermediate care billing increased markedly between 1996 and 2010. These findings highlight the need to better define the value, specific practices, and effective use of intermediate care for patients and hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To determine national readmission rates among sepsis survivors, variations in rates between hospitals, and determine whether measures of quality correlate with performance on sepsis readmissions.Design: Cross-sectional study of sepsis readmissions between 2008 and 2011 in the Medicare fee-for-service database.Setting: Acute care, Medicare participating hospitals from 2008 to 2011.Patients: Septic patients as identified by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision codes using the Angus method.Interventions: None.Measurements and Main Results: We generated hospital-level, risk-standardized, 30-day readmission rates among survivors of sepsis and compared rates across region, ownership, teaching status, sepsis volume, hospital size, and proportion of underserved patients. We examined the relationship between risk-standardized readmission rates and hospital-level composite measures of quality and mortality. From 633,407 hospitalizations among 3,315 hospitals from 2008 to 2011, median risk-standardized readmission rates was 28.7% (interquartile range, 26.1-31.9). There were differences in risk-standardized readmission rates by region (Northeast, 30.4%; South, 29.6%; Midwest, 28.8%; and West, 27.7%; p < 0.001), teaching versus nonteaching status (31.1% vs 29.0%; p < 0.001), and hospitals serving the highest proportion of underserved patients (30.6% vs 28.7%; p < 0.001). The best performing hospitals on a composite quality measure had highest risk-standardized readmission rates compared with the lowest (32.0% vs 27.5%; p < 0.001). Risk-standardized readmission rates was lower in the highest mortality hospitals compared with those in the lowest (28.7% vs 30.7%; p < 0.001).Conclusions: One third of sepsis survivors were readmitted and wide variation exists between hospitals. Several demographic and structural factors are associated with this variation. Measures of higher quality in-hospital care were correlated with higher readmission rates. Several potential explanations are possible including poor risk standardization, more research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]