Death Rate Among Surgical Inpatients With Serious Treatable Complications

Identifying Attributes

Care Settings
Hospital Care
Country
United States of America
Publishing Organisation
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): Patient Safety Indicators; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS): Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program; Veterans Health Administration (VHA)
Type of Quality Indicator
Outcome
IOM Quality Dimension
Safety
Domain
Mortality

Defining Attributes

Definition

In-hospital deaths per 1,000 surgical discharges among patients with serious treatable complications (shock/cardiac arrest, sepsis, pneumonia, gastrointestinal haemorrhage/acute ulcer, or deep vein thrombosis/pulmonary embolism).

Numerator

Number of deaths among discharges meeting the inclusion and exclusion rules for the denominator.

Denominator

Surgical discharges for patients aged 18 through 89 years with admission type of elective, or any admission type in which the earliest ICD-10-PCS code for an operating room procedure occurs within two days of admission, and meets the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the serious treatable complications.

Exclusions

Non-Medicare patients and beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare managed care plans are excluded from the data.

Use of Risk Adjustment
No
Risk Adjustments

None

Stratifications

By hospital.

Data Attributes

Type of Data Collection
Administrative data
Data Collection Methods

Discharge data

Frequency of Data Collection
Annually
Frequency of Data Collection in Days
365
Reporting Methods

Hospital Care Compare Website

Reporting Frequency
Annually
Reporting Frequency in Days
365
Indicator Has Recommended Targets
No

Source and Reference Attributes

Link to Measurement Tools
Quality Indicator Confirmed to be Part of a Program Used to Monitor Quality and Safety of Care Among Older People at a Population-Level between 2012-2022
Yes
Assessed by the Australian Consortium for Aged Care Collaborators as Generally Containing Good Properties (Importance and Scientific Acceptability)
No
Australian Consortium for Aged Care Endorsed
No
Identified by PHARMA-Care Project
No
Upload Date
23 July 2025