Better Surgical Outcomes Costly for Hospitals

[birdwatcher]

medpagetoday.com -- Data from an unidentified 12-hospital system in 2010 indicated that the occurrence of surgical complications boosted the "contribution margin" -- the difference between gross revenues and variable costs associated with patient care -- relative to cases without complications, when they involved the 85% of patients who had Medicare or private insurance, according to Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues.