Table 3.

Hospital characteristics stratified by quartiles of risk-standardized hospital rates of inotrope use.

Hospital Variable	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	P-value
	Low Use Hospitals			High Use Hospitals
	N=52	N=52	N=53	N=52
Number of heart failure hospitalizations 2005–2011, median (IQR)	255 (97–634)	195 (77–606)	269 (72–788)	344 (116–732)	0.83
Hospital size, inpatient beds, median (IQR)	219 (128–369)	227 (61–83)	258 (107–326)	286 (174–359)	0.31
Region					0.88
West	15.4%	7.7%	13.2%	15.4%
South	44.2%	34.6%	37.7%	42.3%
Midwest	22.1%	30.8%	24.5%	23.1%
Northeast	19.2%	26.9%	24.5%	19.2%
Rural location	15.4%	23.1%	28.3%	13.5%	0.21
Teaching hospital	36.5%	38.5%	24.5%	42.3%	0.26
Heart transplants performed	7.7%	1.9%	5.7%	5.8%	0.61

Q=quartile; IQR=interquartile range.

All tests treat the column variable as ordinal.