Role of Hospital Volumes in Identifying Low-Performing and High-Performing Aortic and Mitral Valve Surgical Centers in the United States [1]
Using a data set from 682 US hospitals during a 10-year period, the relationship of hospital procedure volume for AVR and MVR to adjusted mortality rate was evaluated. Using terciles of volume to classify hospitals according to quality resulted in misclassification of 305 hospitals. Hospital volume has only a modest association with quality as judged by adjusted mortality rates.