Is Hospital Volume the Way to Measure Quality Outcomes? – March 2002

Hospitals and other health care facilities perform a wide variety of procedures on patients annually. The number of procedures a hospital performs is the “volume” for that procedure. When a procedure is done on an emergency basis, the patient will almost always choose a nearby hospital, without regard to quality outcomes. But for non-emergent procedures, is volume a good predictor of quality outcomes? Is a patient’s outcome likely to be better at a high volume hospital (HVH) than at a low volume hospital (LVH)? Are there better predictors of patient outcomes? This paper will begin to address these health care quality and patient safety questions.