• Hideo Yasunaga, Hideki Hashimoto, Hiromasa Horiguchi, Hiroaki Miyata, and Shinya Matsuda.
• Department of Health Management and Policy, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Tokyo, Japan. yasunagah-tky@umin.ac.jp
• Bmc Health Serv Res. 2012 Jan 1;12:129.

BackgroundLittle is known about the effects of professional staffing on cancer surgical outcomes. The present study aimed to investigate the association between cancer surgical outcomes and physician/nurse staffing in relation to hospital volume.MethodsWe analyzed 131,394 patients undergoing lung lobectomy, esophagectomy, gastrectomy, colorectal surgery, hepatectomy or pancreatectomy for cancer between July and December, 2007-2008, using the Japanese Diagnosis Procedure Combination database linked to the Survey of Medical Institutions data. Physician-to-bed ratio (PBR) and nurse-to-bed ratio (NBR) were determined for each hospital. Hospital volume was categorized into low, medium and high for each of six cancer surgeries. Failure to rescue (FTR) was defined as a proportion of inhospital deaths among those with postoperative complications. Multi-level logistic regression analysis was performed to examine the association between physician/nurse staffing and FTR, adjusting for patient characteristics and hospital volume.ResultsOverall inhospital mortality was 1.8%, postoperative complication rate was 15.2%, and FTR rate was 11.9%. After adjustment for hospital volume, FTR rate in the group with high PBR (≥19.7 physicians per 100 beds) and high NBR (≥77.0 nurses per 100 beds) was significantly lower than that in the group with low PBR (<19.7) and low NBR (<77.0) (9.2% vs. 14.5%; odds ratio, 0.76; 95% confidence interval, 0.68-0.86; p < 0.001).ConclusionsWell-staffed hospitals confer a benefit for cancer surgical patients regarding reduced FTR, irrespective of hospital volume. These results suggest that consolidation of surgical centers linked with migration of medical professionals may improve the quality of cancer surgical management.

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