Sunday, August 09, 2015

Has using mortality as a quality indicator for hospitals died?

BMJ editorial confirms that academic opinion is finally coming round to accepting that Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios (HSMRs) are not a useful signal of whether something is going wrong in hospital care (see previous post). A linked article did not find a significant association between HSMR and avoidable deaths. Even measuring avoidable deaths is open to interpretation and not an exact science. As a rapid response says, "Monitoring hospital quality by means of HSMR and other mortality indicators has failed to benefit any one except Dr Foster" (see previous post).

People who cause a stir

I've just had a week in Arncliffe, Yorkshire Dales, where John Robinson, my Director of Studies at Trinity (see previous post), is buried. His 1963 Honest to God book, written when he was Bishop of Woolwich, recognised the need for a "secular theology".