Higher rates of serious, but potentially preventable, complications may be a sign of poorer quality hospital care. Hospitals can reduce the chance of these serious complications by following safe practices

This section shows serious complications that patients with Original Medicare experienced during a hospital stay, and how often patients who were admitted with certain conditions died while they were in the hospital. These complications and deaths can often be prevented if hospitals follow procedures based on best practices and scientific evidence.

The report is based on information from Medicare fee-for-service claims from short term, acute care hospitals and is not case-mix adjusted. Columns are defined as follows:

Definitions

Measure

The name of the quality measure. Click column header for a pop-up with additional information about each.

Number Patients

The size of the data sample for the hospital quality measure.

Rate

The percentage of patients in the data sample for a measure that experienced the serious complication or death.

Predicted Range

A range of expected rates is calculated based on national statistics and risk-adjustment factors.

National Average

The average rate achieved by all hospitals in the nation for the quality measure.