I opened up the ACS news and saw my chief resident’s smiling face. He presented a paper demonstrating that procedural volume does not correlate with mortality, thus destroying a popular quality measure. In it he says that finding out what really does effect quality is the “billion dollar” question.

A year ago, after a great deal of frustration with the quality measures that were being propagated, I wrote the document I have attached. I sent it to various powers that be nationally, and naturally didn’t hear anything. I invite you to read it and think about it. Evidence is rare and weak for anything related to examination of processes, and I hate to put another unsubstantiated model for patient safety out there, but you can read it and decide.

Here is the link:

AnRealisticAssessmentSystemforHospitalSafetyandQuality doc

JY