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Hospitals earn $30 000 extra from surgical patients who have complications, study finds

BMJ 2013; 346 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f2522 (Published 18 April 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;346:f2522
  1. Michael McCarthy
  1. 1Seattle

Surgical complications can substantially boost US hospitals’ revenues, a new study shows.

The findings indicate that under the current US healthcare payment system a hospital’s income may suffer if it implements quality improvement measures to reduce infections and other common complications of surgery and numbers of avoidable admissions to intensive care.

In the study, published in JAMA,1 the researchers looked at the financial effects of surgical complications on the revenues of Texas Health, a 12 hospital network that includes a mix of higher and lower …

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