Measuring the quality of clinical performance with hernia and myocardial infarction patients, controlling for patient risks.

This article describes a method for measuring the performance of clinicians treating patients with unilateral inguinal hernia or myocardial infarction. The scoring was based upon the percentage of occasions when appropriate education was given and acute conditions resolved in accordance with clinical expectations. The method was applied to patients of general surgical and general medical firms at two London teaching hospitals in 1972 and 1975. Scores for samples of each diagnosis correlated significantly with subjective evaluations of care by clinicians. Multiple regression was used to identify and weight the patient risk factors (physiological and demographic) significantly associated with lower scores in each disease. Score of patients with these risks were adjusted upward to compensate for the difficulty of achieving good clinical results when these risks were present. Comparison of firms was based upon adjusted scores. Being older and being single, widowed or divorced were significant in both diseases. High blood pressure and anemia were also significantly associated with lower scores for hernia patients, as were the number of cigarettes smoked for infarction patients. The range of scores was wide in surgical firms in both years. While relatively narrow in the medical firms, scores suggest that there is still scope for improvement in some firms. The authors discuss a plan for using these data to arrive at score standards for each disease which could be used to screen clinical care routinely.