Institute for Healthcare Improvement. IHI Innovation Series white paper. Move Your Dot™: Measuring, Evaluating, and Reducing Hospital Mortality Rates. Boston, Massachusetts: Institute for Healthcare Improvement; 2003.

IHI Innovation Series white paper

In an effort to help hospitals know more about their organizational performance as it relates to mortality, and to reduce hospital deaths, a new statistical methodology has been developed as well as a simple analytical tool.

Full text available! Click view white paper below.

Pittard AJ. Out of our reach? Assessing the impact of introducing a critical care outreach service. Anesthesia. 2003;58(9):882-885.

This article studies the implementation of a critical care outreach service at a large teaching hospital. After implementation admission to ICU, length of stay, and hospital mortality all demonstrated significant drops.

Subbe C, Falcus J, Rutherford P, Gemmell L. Capacity planning. Knowing the score. Health Services Journal. 2003;113(5847):32-33.

This article describes how a modified early warning score (MEWS) can be obtained from readily available data.  The MEWS score can then be used to determine approximate length of stay.

Sharpley JT, Holden JC. Introducing an early warning scoring system in a district general hospital. Nursing in Critical Care. 2004;9(3):98-103.

This article describes the introduction of an early warning scoring system between April 2001 and March 2002 to the surgical unit of a district general hospital. The article goes on to explain the development and deployment of the system.

Robson WP. An evaluation of the evidence base related to critical care outreach teams—2 years on from Comprehensive Critical Care. Intensive Critical Care Nursing. 2002;18(4):211-218.

This article contends that even though many hospitals have implemented measures listed within the Comprehensive Critical Care report published two years ago, there is still little evidence to suggest these measures are improving patient outcomes.

McKee M, Coles J, James P. 'Failure to rescue' as a measure of quality of hospital care: The limitations of secondary diagnosis coding in English hospital data. Journal of Public Health Medicine. 1999;21(4):453-458.

This article describes an evaluation of failure to rescue (FTR) in a national sample of English hospitals using hospital episode data. The authors found that the rate of secondary diagnosis recording in England is about one-tenth that in the United States.

Coombs M, Dillon A. Crossing boundaries, re-defining care: The role of the critical care outreach team. Journal of Clinical Nursing. 2002;11(3):387-393.

This article makes a case for further study and broader implementation of critical care outreach teams within the NHS health care system in the United Kingdom.

Aiken LH, Smith HL, Lake ET. Lower Medicare mortality among a set of hospitals known for good nursing care. Medical Care. Aug 1994;32(8):771-787.

This article describes a study whose aim was to investigate whether hospitals known to be good places to practice nursing have lower Medicare mortality than hospitals that are otherwise similar with respect to a variety of non-nursing organizational characteristics.

Aiken LH, Clarke SP, Sloane DM, Sochalski J, Silber JH. Hospital nurse staffing and patient mortality, nurse burnout, and job dissatisfaction. Journal of the American Medical Association. Oct 2002;288(16):1987-1993.

This article describes a study to determine the association between the patient-to-nurse ratio and patient mortality, failure-to-rescue (deaths following complications) among surgical patients, and factors related to nurse retention. The authors conclude that in hospitals with high patient-to-nurse ratios, surgical patients experience higher risk-adjusted 30-day mortality and failure-to-rescue rates, and nurses are more likely to experience burnout and job dissatisfaction.

Aiken LH, Clarke SP, Cheung RB, Sloane DM, Silber JH. Educational levels of hospital nurses and surgical patient mortality. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2003;290(12):1617-1623.

This article describes a study which examined whether the proportion of hospital nurses educated at the baccalaureate level or higher was associated with risk-adjusted mortality and failure to rescue.