In an effort to improve the quality of healthcare, California hospitals are required by law to submit data on all isolated coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) procedures, which is analyzed to publicly report on measures of CABG surgery quality. Such measures include operative mortality (deaths as a result of surgery), risk-adjusted mortality rate (a measure of the mortality rate for an individual hospital compared to the average of a larger group of hospitals), and case volumes (number of procedures performed per year).
In addition, Stanford strives to closely monitor its outcome data for the other complex surgical procedures performed and voluntarily submits its clinical surgical data to the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) National Adult Cardiac Surgery Database. This allows the surgical team to continually compare outcomes on all types of surgical procedures with hospitals nationwide. The combination of clinical data collected and STS national outcome reports is used to continually monitor performance and drive opportunities for outcomes improvement.
Together, these statistics are compiled in report form to assist healthcare consumers, referring physicians, and healthcare insurers compare and choose the most qualified hospitals based upon their surgical needs.
