Table 2.

Characteristics of Surgical Patients (n=641,187)

	Magnet Hospitals (N=109,090)	Non-Magnet Hospitals (N=532,097)	Relative Risk *	P
Characteristic	% (No.)	% (No.)
Age (y), mean (SD)	59.9 (15.9)	60.1 (16.2)	—	0.001
Deaths within 30 days of admission	1.51 (1,645)	1.79 (9,528)	0.84	<0.001
Complications	34.5 (37,631)	33.7 (179,650)	1.02	<0.001
Failure-to-rescue	3.83 (1,440)	4.55 (8,158)	0.84	<0.001
Male	43.2 (47,080)	43.6 (232,202)	0.99	0.028
Major Diagnostic Categories
General surgery
Digestive system diseases	21.8 (23,800)	21.9 (116,281)	1.00	0.815
Hepatobiliary system diseases	10.0 (10,928)	10.8 (57,222)	0.93	<0.001
Skin, subcutaneous tissue, and breast diseases	3.7 (4,034)	3.4 (18,060)	1.09	<0.001
Endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic diseases	6.3 (6,829)	5.2 (27,814)	1.20	<0.001
Orthopedic surgery
Musculoskeletal system diseases	52.3 (57,056)	53.3 (283,357)	0.98	<0.001
Vascular surgery
Circulatory system diseases	5.9 (6,443)	5.5 (29,363)	1.07	<0.001
Medical history (comorbidities)
Hypertension	48.7 (53,113)	49.5 (263,512)	0.98	<0.001
Chronic pulmonary disease	13.9 (15,128)	15.2 (80,736)	0.91	<0.001
Diabetes without chronic complications	14.4 (15,715)	15.6 (82,930)	0.92	<0.001
Metastatic cancer	3.9 (4,252)	3.1 (16,532)	1.25	<0.001
Congestive heart failure	4.3 (4,682)	5.1 (26,907)	0.85	<0.001
Liver disease	2.4 (2,620)	2.4 (12,679)	1.01	0.712
Obesity	8.0 (8,712)	9.5 (50,630)	0.84	<0.001
Depression	7.8 (8,533)	7.7 (40,915)	1.02	0.151

^*We estimated the relative risk of each binary descriptor to give an indication of the size of differences between the populations served by Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals. The effect size (Cohen’s d) for age was very small (0.008).