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Researchers find higher-spending hospitals have fewer deaths among emergency patients
Higher-spending hospitals had lower death rates among emergency patients, according to recent results.
“At least for emergency, acute patients in our study, overall mortality was reduced 20% to 30% in higher-spending hospitals,” researcher John Graves, PhD, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said in a press release. “Doing more in the hospital, including being treated in a teaching or high technology hospital, has a positive impact on outcomes.”
The study was released as a working paper through the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Graves and colleagues analyzed Medicare ambulance and hospital data from 2002 to 2008. They found higher-cost hospitals demonstrated significantly lower 1-year mortality rates when compared with lower-cost hospitals.
The researchers found treatment in a teaching hospital reduced the risk of death within 1 year by 4%, while the most technologically advanced hospitals reduced risk of death by 4.7%. Additionally, high levels of initial treatment intensity in emergency situations were found to reduce risk by 18%.
Although the study doesn’t discount the idea that there is wasteful spending, it provides evidence that some hospitals spending more on acute or emergent care can demonstrate better survival outcomes, Graves said in the release.
“An efficient hospital, a high acuity hospital and a technologically advanced hospital all will exhibit high cost structures, and each may or may not be better at saving lives,” Graves said. “The challenge is being able to ‘unbundle’ the complex cost-mortality association and pinpoint areas that can be improved upon to lower costs without harming quality.”
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