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Busy hospitals have better success rates

Free Market Foundation

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Researchers find a strong correlation between the number of times a particular procedure is performed and the chances a patient’s treatment will be a success.

  • A 1998 study published by the American Journal of Public Health found that over a five year period, breast cancer patients treated at very low-volume hospitals had a 60 percent greater risk of dying than patients from very high-volume hospitals.
  • A study in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that patients at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York who had surgery to remove parts of lungs affected by cancer had a much better chance of survival – and fewer complications – than patients having similar surgery in a hospital that did not do many such surgeries.
  • A study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that the in-hospital mortality of patients who underwent primary angioplasty at highest-volume hospitals was 28 percent lower than that of patients at low-volume hospitals.

    Similar outcomes apply to liver and heart transplants, as well as coronary bypass surgery.

    Source: Ivan Oransky (Praxis Post, an online medical magazine), Best Hospitals Perform in High Volumes, USA Today, August 7, 2001.

    For text http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-08-07-ncguest1.htm

    For more on Quality of Care and Patient Protection
    http://www.ncpa.org/pi/health/hedex2b.html

    FMF\14 August 2001

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