Early mortality following percutaneous coronary intervention and cardiac surgery: Correlations within providers and...

It is not clear whether correlations exist within hospitals or operators among risk-adjusted mortality rates (RAMRs) for the most common cardiac interventions and how much of variations in outcomes are residually explained by providers and physicians. We examined these aspects by using recent national data on percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and cardiac surgery.

Publically available data from New York State aggregated at hospital and operator level were downloaded by Department of Health website for in-hospital/30-day mortality after PCI, coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) and valve surgery. Correlations between RAMRs were evaluated by using Spearman's coefficient (rho). The proportion of mortality variation attributed to hospitals and operators was estimated.

During the period 2008-2013, 390 cardiologists from 63 hospitals and 163 surgeons from 41 centres were evaluated. The RAMRs during 2008-2010 correlated with the RAMRs during 2011-2013 for valve surgery within providers (rho=0.55;p<0.001) and within interventionists for PCI (rho=0.21;p<0.001), isolated CABG (rho=0.25;p=0.009), and any valve surgery or CABG procedure (rho=0.49;p<0.001). The most recent hospital's RAMRs (year 2012 and 2013) significantly correlated in PCI (rho=0.40;p=0.002) but not in CABG (rho=0.13;p=0.413). <2% of mortality variations was attributed to providers and 2-3% to difference between operators.

A correlation exists at provider and operator level in RAMRs for PCI and cardiac surgery procedures performed in New York State. Beyond patient's risk profile, that is the strongest predictor of early mortality after a cardiac procedure, hospitals and operators have a small but statistically significant contribution to variation in post-operative outcome.