Patient Safety and Inpatient Quality Indicators
Patient Safety Indicators are a set of measures that screen for potentially avoidable complications that patients may experience while hospitalized. Inpatient Quality Indicators help provide a perspective on quality of care in hospitals. Both sets of indicators were developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
The Patient Safety and Inpatient Quality Indicators below compare coded Medicare patient claims data for UW Hospital and Clinics to all Medicare hospitals. The data were calculated using 2006 Medicare claims data. The percentile rankings are UW Hospital and Clinics' percentile ranking. The lower the percentile ranking, the better the performance, with 1 being the best and 100 the worst.
UW Hospital and Clinics' goal is to be the safest hospital in the country. We take active measures to improve the safety and quality of our care. For example, we reviewed several cases of iatrogenic pneumothorax or accidental injury to the lung or chest cavity. We found that some cases were coded (for billing purposes) as having been a complication of care when the lung had been collapsed for treatment reasons. We also purchased technology that reduces the risk of accidental injury through the use of ultrasound when placing small bore feeding tubes in our critically ill patients. Our current data collection related to postoperative wound dehiscence indicates our performance is as expected.
| Patient Safety and Quality Indicators | All Hospital Percentile Ranking |
| Death among surgical patients with treatable serious complications per 1,000 patients | 10 |
| Iatrogenic pneumothorax per 1,000 discharges1 | 75 |
| Postoperative wound dehiscence per 1,000 discharges2 | 75 |
| Accidental puncture or laceration per 1,000 discharges3 | 25 |
| Complication/patient safety composite4 | 25 |
| AAA mortality rate with volume per 1,000 discharges5 | 5 |
| Hip fracture mortality rate per 1,000 discharges6 | 5 |
| Mortality composite for selected surgical procedures7 | 25 |
| Mortality composite for selected medical procedures7 | 5 |
Key
1. Iatrogenic Pneumothorax: A complication resulting in an accidental injury to the lung or chest wall. It may occur following surgery or in association with procedures which involve entry into the chest cavity.
2. Postoperative Wound Dehiscence: A complication where a previously closed surgical wound reopens.
3. Accidental Puncture or Laceration: An accidental cut, puncture, perforation or laceration during a procedure.
4. Composite Measure: A combination of two or more individual measures into a single measure that results in a single score.
5. Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA): An aneurysm involving the aorta in the lower part of the abdomen. The aorta is one of the large arteries through which blood passes from the heart to the rest of the body. Learn more
6. Mortality Rate: is the measure of deaths in a certain population of patients.
7. Procedures include: esophageal resection, pancreatic resection, AAA repair, coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), craniotomy, hip replacement, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), carotid endarterectomy.