Does practice make perfect? Part II: The relation between volume and outcomes and other hospital characteristics

Med Care. 1984 Feb;22(2):115-25.

Abstract

The effect of a greater volume of patients with similar conditions being treated at a hospital on the outcomes achieved is investigated for almost 500,000 selected surgical and medical patients treated in over 1,200 nonfederal United States hospitals. In Part I the authors found strong and consistent evidence for surgical patients that high volume is associated with better outcome; evidence for medical patients was mixed. In this paper the authors include other hospital variables related both to volume and outcome--hospital size, teaching status, and expenditures--to determine whether they mask the true relationship; still, strong and consistent evidence that greater volume produces better outcome was found for both surgical and medical patients. This relation was significant for low-, medium-, and high-risk patients. Among the hospital variations added, only size was consistently and strongly related to outcome; greater size was associated with poorer outcome after accounting for volume. The potential importance of the findings for reducing deaths and days in hospital on a national level is discussed. The evidence is strongly supportive of the need for policies that would promote greater regionalization of a given service, and not greater size, to obtain better quality outcome for patients treated.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Bed Occupancy
  • Health Expenditures
  • Hospital Bed Capacity
  • Hospitals / statistics & numerical data*
  • Hospitals, Teaching / statistics & numerical data
  • Humans
  • Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care*
  • Regional Medical Programs
  • Regression Analysis
  • Risk
  • Surgical Procedures, Operative / mortality
  • United States