U-of-M Study Finds Cost of Care Related to Quality of Care

University of Michigan researchers have found that the cost of treating children with congenital heart defects varies greatly across U-S Hospitals.
 
Sara K. Pasquali is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan. As lead author of the study, she says the findings show higher quality of care seemed to be associated with lower costs.
 
Pasquali says for one of the procedures they looked at, higher-cost hospitals had nearly twice the average length of stay as lower-cost hospitals.
 
She says additionally the study showed the higher cost hospitals had over two times the amount of post-operative complications than lower cost hospitals. Pasquali says the wide variation of costs, some as much as nine-fold, shows there is likely ample room for improvement in the area of cost and quality of care.
 
Pasquali says more research is needed to understand how hospitals can achieve improvements in these areas.