Medical care
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The United States is about to make a major nationwide transition from ICD-9-CM coding of hospital discharges to ICD-10-CM, a country-specific modification of the World Health Organization's ICD-10. As this transition occurs, the WHO is already in the midst of developing ICD-11. Given this context, we undertook this review to discuss: (1) the history of the International Classification of Diseases (a core information "building block" for health systems everywhere) from its introduction to the current era of ICD-11 development; (2) differences across country-specific ICD-10 clinical modifications and the challenges that these differences pose to the international comparability of morbidity data; (3) potential strategic approaches to achieving better international ICD-11 comparability. ⋯ The threat to the comparability of international clinical morbidity is growing with the development of many country-specific ICD-10 versions. One solution to this threat is to develop a meta-database including all country-specific modifications to ensure more efficient use of people and resources, decrease omissions and errors but most importantly provide a platform for future ICD updates.
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Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is the most common infectious cause of death in the United States. To understand the effect of efforts to improve quality and efficiency of care in CAP, we examined the trends in mortality and costs among hospitalized CAP patients. ⋯ Mortality among patients hospitalized for CAP has declined. Lower in-hospital mortality at a reduced cost suggests that pneumonia is a case of improved productivity in health care.
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Comparative Study
Comparison of in-hospital versus 30-day mortality assessments for selected medical conditions.
In-hospital mortality measures such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Inpatient Quality Indicators (IQIs) are easily derived using hospital discharge abstracts and publicly available software. However, hospital assessments based on a 30-day postadmission interval might be more accurate given potential differences in facility discharge practices. ⋯ The AHRQ IQI software can be easily adapted to generate 30-day mortality rates. Although 30-day mortality has better face validity as a hospital performance measure than in-hospital mortality, site assessments were similar despite the definition used. Thus, the measure selected for internal benchmarking should primarily depend on the healthcare system's data linkage capabilities.
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There is increasing policy interest in public reporting and tying financial incentives to metrics of patient safety. How black-serving hospitals fare on these measures will have important implications for disparities in care. ⋯ Hospitals that disproportionately care for black patients have higher rates of potential safety events among both black and white patients than other hospitals. Current efforts to penalize hospitals with high PSI rates will have a greater effect on hospitals that disproportionately care for black patients.