• Kevin M Trentino, Stuart G Swain, Sally A Burrows, Peter C Sprivulis, and Frank F S Daly.
• Performance Unit, South Metropolitan Health Service, Perth, WA, Australia. kevin.trentino@health.wa.gov.au.
• Med. J. Aust.. 2013 Oct 21;199(8):543-7.

ObjectivesTo use an automated Classification of Hospital Acquired Diagnoses (CHADx) reporting system to report the incidence of hospital-acquired complications in inpatients and investigate the association between hospital-acquired complications and hospital length of stay (LOS) in multiday-stay patients.DesignRetrospective cross-sectional study for calendar years 2010 and 2011.SettingSouth Metropolitan Health Service in Western Australia, which consists of two teaching and three non-teaching hospitals.Main Outcome MeasuresIncidence of hospital-acquired complications and mean LOS for multiday-stay patients.ResultsOf 436 841 inpatient separations, 29 172 (6.68%) had at least one hospital-acquired complication code assigned in the administrative data, and there were a total of 56 326 complication codes. The three most common complications were postprocedural complications; cardiovascular complications; and labour, delivery and postpartum complications. In the subset of data on multiday-stay patients, crude mean LOS was longer in separations for patients with hospital-acquired complications than in separations for those without such complications (17.4 days v 5.4 days). After adjusting for potential confounders, separations for patients with hospital-acquired complications had almost four times the mean LOS of separations for those without such complications (incident rate ratio, 3.84; 95% CI, 3.73-3.96; P < 0.001).ConclusionsAn automated CHADx reporting system can be used to collect data on patients with hospital-acquired complications. Such data can be used to increase emphasis on patient safety and quality of care and identify potential opportunities to reduce LOS.

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