: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) released rules effective July 1, 2003 that affected duty hours for all ACGME-accredited residency programs in all specialties. These rules represent the largest national effort to reduce medical errors since the publication of the Institute of Medicine's To Err is Human in 2000 and will directly impact the health care received by the 44% of patients cared for in teaching hospitals in the United States. By reducing sleep deprivation, the rules will likely have beneficial effects on patient safety and quality of care, but worsened continuity of care may counterbalance some of these benefits. This project will evaluate the effect of the duty hour rules on patient safety and quality of care, utilizing national data available though Medicare and pre-validated measures of quality including the AHRQ Quality Indicators. The primary aims of the project are to compare changes in the rate of mortality and failure-to-rescue (death after complications) in teaching hospitals and non-teaching hospitals before and after implementation of the ACGME work hour rules. Diagnoses studied will include all patients admitted for general, orthopedic, or vascular surgery and medical diagnoses of acute myocardial infarction, gastrointestinal bleeding, or stroke. The secondary aims are to examine differences in AHRQ Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) before and after the rule change and to study how length of stay (LOS), the probability of a prolonged length of stay, and conditional length of stay (LOS once a stay is prolonged) changed in teaching vs. non-teaching hospitals. The study will be based on approximately 16 million surgical and medical admissions collected from the Medicare's MEDPAR data set spanning the years 1999-2003 (before the rule change) and 2003-2005 (after the rule change). We will use a multiple time series design with non-teaching hospitals as a control for teaching hospitals and will examine how effects differ in accordance with hospital dependence on residents (resident/bed ratio), program type and size, and hospitals' baseline financial status. The study will be powered to detect very small differences in these outcomes and will be able to test definitively whether the duty hour reform improved (or possibly worsened) patient safety and quality of care. Results from this study will be central to any future efforts to reduce errors in teaching hospitals through resident work hour reform.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HL082637-02
Application #
7067222
Study Section
Health Care Quality and Effectiveness Research (HQER)
Program Officer
Twery, Michael
Project Start
2005-05-20
Project End
2008-04-30
Budget Start
2006-05-01
Budget End
2007-04-30
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2006
Total Cost
$505,985
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Pennsylvania
Department
Internal Medicine/Medicine
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
042250712
City
Philadelphia
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
19104
Silber, Jeffrey H; Romano, Patrick S; Itani, Kamal M F et al. (2014) Assessing the effects of the 2003 resident duty hours reform on internal medicine board scores. Acad Med 89:644-51
Navathe, Amol S; Silber, Jeffrey H; Small, Dylan S et al. (2013) Teaching hospital financial status and patient outcomes following ACGME duty hour reform. Health Serv Res 48:476-98
Navathe, Amol S; Silber, Jeffrey H; Zhu, Jingsan et al. (2013) Does admission to a teaching hospital affect acute myocardial infarction survival? Acad Med 88:475-82
Silber, Jeffrey H; Kaestner, Robert; Even-Shoshan, Orit et al. (2010) Aggressive treatment style and surgical outcomes. Health Serv Res 45:1872-92
Volpp, Kevin G; Friedman, William; Romano, Patrick S et al. (2010) Residency training at a crossroads: duty-hour standards 2010. Ann Intern Med 153:826-8
Silber, Jeffrey H; Rosenbaum, Paul R; Brachet, Tanguy J et al. (2010) The Hospital Compare mortality model and the volume-outcome relationship. Health Serv Res 45:1148-67
Volpp, Kevin G; Rosen, Amy K; Rosenbaum, Paul R et al. (2009) Did duty hour reform lead to better outcomes among the highest risk patients? J Gen Intern Med 24:1149-55
Silber, Jeffrey H; Rosenbaum, Paul R; Romano, Patrick S et al. (2009) Hospital teaching intensity, patient race, and surgical outcomes. Arch Surg 144:113-20; discussion 121
Silber, Jeffrey H; Rosenbaum, Paul R; Rosen, Amy K et al. (2009) Prolonged hospital stay and the resident duty hour rules of 2003. Med Care 47:1191-200
Rosen, Amy K; Loveland, Susan A; Romano, Patrick S et al. (2009) Effects of resident duty hour reform on surgical and procedural patient safety indicators among hospitalized Veterans Health Administration and Medicare patients. Med Care 47:723-31

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