Abstract 114: Does Size Matter? Comparing Cardiac Arrest Survival to Discharge Rates Based on Number of Hospital Beds
Background and Objectives: In-hospital cardiac arrest can be challenging. The frequency of events outside of critical care units is typically low which makes it a stressful event for staff. According to the HEROIC study, there were 209,000 in-hospital cardiac arrests in the United States in 2016. Only 24.9% survived. Get With the Guidelines-Resuscitation is a quality improvement tool for hospitals to measure and evaluate their in-house codes and resuscitation rates. It may be assumed that survival rates are better at larger hospitals. The objective of this study was to examine the association between in-hospital cardiac arrest rates based on the bed size of a hospital. Methods: By using number of beds as a comparison and data from Get With the Guidelines-Resuscitation we sampled 46 hospitals in the eleven-state AHA Midwest Affiliate, (IL, IN, IA, KS, MI, MN, MO, NE, ND, SD, WI), comparing survival to discharge from cardiac arrest, with and without shockable rhythms from January 1, 2013-December 31, 2016. All patients are included in a risk adjusted formula that resides within Get With the Guidelines-Resuscitation. Results: In our comparison, we included hospitals with licensed and/or staffed beds of <100, 100-199, 200-299, 300-399 and 400 or more beds. Our data showed that higher sustained return of spontaneous circulation rates with survival to discharge are not dictated by the size of a hospital. In fact, in all 4 years shown, successful resuscitation rates were higher at hospitals with fewer beds verses larger facilities. Conclusions: Survival to discharge from in-hospital cardiac arrest is not dependent on hospital bed size. It is important that hospitals collect and analyze data regarding in-hospital cardiac arrests to improve survival rates beyond the 24.9% identified in the HEROIC study. A further examination looking at discharge destinations with CPC scores should be considered for a future study.