Does Practice Make
Perfect?
The benefits of busy hospitals
Patients with ailments ranging
from heart attacks to AIDS tend to do better at hospitals that treat
higher numbers of patients with such ailments, though it's not clear
why.
References:
Collette, L., et al. 1999. Impact of the treating institution
on survival of patients with "poor-prognosis" metastatic nonseminoma.
Journal of the National Cancer Institute 91(May 19):839.
Norton, E.C., et al. 1998. The effect of hospital volume on
the in-hospital complication rate in knee replacement patients. Health
Services Research 33(December):1191.
Thiemann, D.R., et al. 1999. The association between hospital
volume and survival after acute myocardial infarction in elderly patients.
New England Journal of Medicine 340(May 27):1640.
U.S. General Accounting Office. 1998. Specialty Care: Heart attack
survivors treated by cardiologists more likely to take recommended
drugs. Report to Congessional Requesters (December).
Further Readings:
Begg, C.B., et al. 1998. Impact of hospital volume on operative
mortality for major cancer surgery. Journal of the American Medical
Association 280(Nov. 25):1747.
Nash, I.S., et al. 1999. Generalist versus specialist care
for acute myocardial infarction. American Journal of Cardiology
83:650.
Sources:
Carolyn Clancy
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research
Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research
6010 Executive Boulevard
Rockville, MD 20852
Martin T. Donohoe
Oregon Health Sciences University
General Internal Medicine (L-475)
Center for Ethics in Health Care
3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Road
Portland, OR 97225
Edward L. Hannan
University of Albany
School of Public Health
Department of Biometry and Statistics
1 University Place, Room 150
Rensselaer, NY 12144
Harlan M. Krumholz
Yale University School of Medicine
333 Cedar Street, IE-61 SHM
P.O. Box 208025
New Haven, CT 06520-8025
Ira S. Nash
Mount Sinai Medical Center
Wiener Cardiovascular Institute
Box 1030
One Guslave L. Levy Place
New York, NY 10029
Diana Petitti
Kaiser Permanente Medical Care
Program Research and Evaluation
393 East Walnut
Pasadena, CA 91188
David R. Thiemann
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Carnegie 568
Baltimore, MD 21287-6568
From Science
News, Vol. 156, No. 3, July 17, 1999, p. 44.
Copyright © 1999, Science Service.
