Published Online
on March 20, 2006

A more recent version of this article appeared on April 4, 2006

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Submitted on December 28, 2005
Revised on February 13, 2006
Accepted on February 16, 2006

An Administrative Claims Model Suitable for Profiling Hospital Performance Based on 30-Day Mortality Rates Among Patients With an Acute Myocardial Infarction

Harlan M. Krumholz MD, SM^*, Yun Wang PhD, Jennifer A. Mattera MPH, Yongfei Wang MS, Lein Fang Han PhD, Melvin J. Ingber PhD, Sheila Roman MD, MPH, and Sharon-Lise T. Normand PhD

From the Section of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Medicine (H.M.K., Yongfei Wang), Section of Health Policy and Administration, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health (H.M.K.), and Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program (H.M.K.), Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn; Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Yale New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Conn (H.M.K., Yun Wang, J.A.M.); Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Baltimore, Md (L.F.H., M.J.I., S.R.); Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass (S.T.N.); and Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass (S.T.N.).

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: harlan.krumholz{at}yale.edu.

Background--A model using administrative claims data that is suitable for profiling hospital performance for acute myocardial infarction would be useful in quality assessment and improvement efforts. We sought to develop a hierarchical regression model using Medicare claims data that produces hospital risk-standardized 30-day mortality rates and to validate the hospital estimates against those derived from a medical record model.

Methods and Results--For hospital estimates derived from claims data, we developed a derivation model using 140 120 cases discharged from 4664 hospitals in 1998. For the comparison of models from claims data and medical record data, we used the Cooperative Cardiovascular Project database. To determine the stability of the model over time, we used annual Medicare cohorts discharged in 1995, 1997, and 1999-2001. The final model included 27 variables and had an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.71. In a comparison of the risk-standardized hospital mortality rates from the claims model with those of the medical record model, the correlation coefficient was 0.90 (SE=0.003). The slope of the weighted regression line was 0.95 (SE=0.007), and the intercept was 0.008 (SE=0.001), both indicating strong agreement of the hospital estimates between the 2 data sources. The median difference between the claims-based hospital risk-standardized mortality rates and the chart-based rates was <0.001 (25th and 75th percentiles, -0.003 and 0.003). The performance of the model was stable over time.

Conclusions--This administrative claims-based model for profiling hospitals performs consistently over several years and produces estimates of risk-standardized mortality that are good surrogates for estimates from a medical record model.

Key words: health policy • quality of health care • myocardial infarction

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