Background:
Cardiac Services BC (CSBC) is responsible for planning, coordinating, monitoring, and, in some cases, funding cardiac services across British Columbia (BC) in collaboration with senior administrators and physicians from five regional health authorities. CSBC maintains the BC Cardiac Registry (BCCR), a longitudinal clinical registry of all invasive cardiac procedures performed in BC. For over 10 years, CSBC has used BCCR data to evaluate annually quality of care indicators for isolated coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), isolated valve, and CABG+valve surgeries.
Methods:
In preparation for each annual review, CSBC meets with an established Planning Committee of representative surgeons. BCCR data is linked to provincial Vital Statistics data, to the national Discharge Abstract Database, and for the last 3 yearly analyses to the provincial Central Transfusion Registry which provides robust data on red blood cell (RBC) transfusion. At the annual review, CSBC meets with surgeons who are included in the analyses to present the indicator data.
Results:
In the 2012 evaluation, the following quality of care indicators were presented for the 2007-2011 period: 30-day mortality and 30-day stroke; 30-day RBC transfusion; and indicators for evidence-based medications at discharge. Risk-adjusted analyses were prepared for the 30-day mortality and 30-day stroke indicators to provide valid comparisons over time and according to hospital and surgeon. Patient characteristics and pre-procedural factors were included in the risk models. The risk-adjusted models performed well with C-statistics for the 30-day mortality models for isolated CABG, isolated valve, and CABG+valve surgeries of 0.86, 0.89, and 0.81, and for the 30-day stroke models 0.80, 0.83, and 0.74, respectively. Expected rates by hospital and by surgeon were determined from each risk model, and observed to expected (O/E) ratios were used for comparison of hospitals and surgeons. Rates of RBC transfusion varied by hospital, and a large reduction in transfusion rates from 69% (378 of 546) in 2007 to 43% (252 of 589) in 2011 was observed at one site with historically higher rates.
Conclusion:
Presenting quality of care indicators annually has raised awareness of outcome rates and variations which existed across the province. The annual process of engaging surgeons in the evaluation process and linkage with other administrative databases to obtain outcome data has been associated with a reduction in use of RBC transfusion and instigated further investigations into regional variation in mortality rates. The addition of new indicators and other risk-adjusted analyses in the future may further improve quality of care in cardiac surgery in BC.
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