Failure to rescue in trauma: Early and late mortality in low- and high-performing trauma centers

Failure to rescue (FTR) is defined as mortality following a complication. Failure to rescue has come under scrutiny as a quality metric to compare trauma centers. In contrast to elective surgery, trauma has an early period of high expected mortality because of injury sequelae rather than a complication. Here, we report FTR in early and late mortality using an externally validated trauma patient database, hypothesizing that centers with higher risk-adjusted mortality rates have higher risk-adjusted FTR rates.

The study included 114,220 patients at 34 Levels I and II trauma centers in a statewide quality collaborative (2016-2020) with Injury Severity Score of ≥5. Emergency department deaths were excluded. Multivariate regression models were used to produce center-level adjusted rates for mortality and major complications. Centers were ranked on adjusted mortality rate and divided into quintiles. Early deaths (within 48 hours of presentation) and late deaths (after 48 hours) were analyzed.

Overall, 6.7% of patients had a major complication and 3.1% died. There was no difference in the mean risk-adjusted complication rate among the centers. Failure to rescue was significantly different across the quintiles (13.8% at the very low-mortality centers vs. 23.4% at the very-high-mortality centers, p < 0.001). For early deaths, there was no difference in FTR rates among the highest and lowest mortality quintiles. For late deaths, there was a twofold increase in the FTR rate between the lowest and highest mortality centers (9.7% vs. 19.3%, p < 0.001), despite no difference in the rates of major complications (5.9% vs. 6.0%, p = 0.42).

Low-performing trauma centers have higher mortality rates and lower rates of rescue following major complications. These differences are most evident in patients who survive the first 48 hours after injury. A better understanding of the complications and their role in mortality after 48 hours is an area of interest for quality improvement efforts.

Prognostic and Epidemiologic; Level III.