Rather than try and directly compare hospitals with each other, we need to compare a hospital’s survival rate with what we would predict it to be, taking into account how severe their cases are.
- David Spiegelhalter
The website, Understanding Children’s Heart Surgery Outcomes, which launched yesterday, shows decision makers and parents that hospitals should not be ranked by their survival rates, because hospitals treat different patients — high performing hospitals can have lower survival rates simply because they are taking on the most complex cases. An individual hospital’s actual survival rate should only be compared to its own predicted range, which is determined by the complexity of the procedures it undertakes, among other factors. The website also sets out why if a hospital's survival rate is below its predicted range, it need not indicate alarm, but rather serves as a trigger for further investigation.
The website was developed by Christina Pagel from University College London and Sir David Spiegelhalter from the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with the charity Sense about Science and experimental psychologist Tim Rakow from King’s College London. It explains a risk adjustment method known as PRAiS (Partial Risk Adjustment in Surgery).
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Image: Surgeon
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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