On the Hospital Volume and Outcome Relationship: Does Specialization Matter More Than Volume?

Kris CL Lee; Kannan Sethuraman; Jongsay Yong

Journal article

On the Hospital Volume and Outcome Relationship: Does Specialization Matter More Than Volume?

Kris CL Lee, Kannan Sethuraman, Jongsay Yong

HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH | WILEY-BLACKWELL | Published : 2015

DOI: 10.1111/1475-6773.12302

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the relationship between hospital volume and outcome by focusing on alternative measures of volume that capture specialization and overall throughput of hospitals. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: Hospital administrative data from the state of Victoria, Australia; data contain 1,798,474 admitted episodes reported by 135 public and private acute-care hospitals. STUDY DESIGN: This study contrasts the volume-outcome relationship using regression models with different measures of volume; two-step and single-step risk-adjustment methods are used. DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION METHODS: The sample is restricted to ischemic heart disease (IHD) patients (ICD-10 codes: I20-I25) admitted..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Jongsay Yong Author Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

Kannan Sethuraman Author Business Administration

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council Linkage

Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council Partnership

Funding Acknowledgements

Funding from the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant LP0455325 and National Health and Medical Research Council Partnership Grant 567217 is gratefully acknowledged. We thank the Victorian Department of Health (formerly the Victorian Department of Human Services) for providing the data. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.