Comparison of postoperative mortality and morbidity in VA and nonfederal hospitals

We compared postoperative mortality and morbidity rates in the Veterans Health Administration (VA) to those in nonfederal hospitals, using multivariate analysis to adjust for the patient characteristics of age, diagnosis, comorbidity, and severity of illness. We used a total of 544,000 patient discharge records (330,000 nonfederal and 214,000 VA) from 1987 through 1988 and compared 118 surgical procedures or procedure groups composed of 314 individual surgical procedures. We found no significant differences in postoperative mortality rates between the VA and nonfederal hospital systems for 110 of 118 surgical procedures or procedure groups. Endarterectomy, cervical esophagostomy, and esophageal anastomosis or esophagocolostomy showed significantly lower postoperative mortality in the VA hospitals compared to nonfederal hospitals (P = 0.05). VA postoperative mortality rates that were higher than those in nonfederal hospitals and could not be entirely explained by adjusting for patient characteristics were found for suture of ulcer, cholecystostomy, colon surgery, small intestine surgery, and reopening of recent thoracotomy site (P = 0.05). Respiratory, gastrointestinal, and urinary postoperative morbidity were generally lower in the VA hospitals than in nonfederal hospitals (P = 0.05). Infections were generally higher in the VA hospitals than in nonfederal hospitals. Pulmonary embolism, deep venous thrombosis, shock due to surgery or anesthesia, mediastinitis, hemorrhage, cardiac, and central nervous system morbidity showed no significant differences. These data demonstrate that VA postoperative mortality and morbidity in 118 surgical procedures or procedure groups is comparable to those in nonfederal hospitals.