Template matching for benchmarking hospital performance in the veterans affairs healthcare system.

ABSTRACT: Comparing hospital performance in a health system is traditionally done with multilevel regression models that adjust for differences in hospitals' patient case-mix. In contrast, "template matching" compares outcomes of similar patients at different hospitals but has been used only in limited patient settings.Our objective was to test a basic template matching approach in the nationwide Veterans Affairs healthcare system (VA), compared with a more standard regression approach.We performed various simulations using observational data from VA electronic health records whereby we randomly assigned patients to "pseudo hospitals," eliminating true hospital level effects. We randomly selected a representative template of 240 patients and matched 240 patients on demographic and physiological fact

SUBMITTER: Vincent BM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6531221 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature