Table 4 –
Unadjusted Inpatient Safety Measures for Lumbar Spinal Fusion by Race/Ethnicity
| Safety Measures | White | Black | Hispanic | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Average LOS (days) | 3.73 (3.64 - 3.81) | 4.35 (4.17 - 4.54) | 4.07 (3.84 - 4.3) | 4.14 (3.87 - 4.4) |
| Prolonged LOS1 (%) | 11.7 (11 - 12.4) | 18.1 (16.2 - 19.9) | 14.5 (12.1 - 17) | 15.4 (12.9 - 17.9) |
| Inpatient Medical Complication2 (%) | 7.7 (7.3 - 8.1) | 9.9 (8.6 - 11.2) | 8.7 (7 - 10.4) | 8 (6.3 - 9.8) |
| Inpatient Surgical Complication3 (%) | 5.4 (5 - 5.7) | 5.2 (4.3 - 6.2) | 6.9 (5.5 - 8.3) | 5.5 (4.1 - 7) |
| Mortality (%) | 0.1 (0.1 - 0.2) | 0.2 (0 - 0.4) | 0.1 (0 - 0.3) | 0.1 (0 - 0.3) |
| Total Admission Cost4 (US dollars) | 33,583 (32,622–34,544) | 34,699 (33,139–36,259) | 37,088 (34,908–39,267) | 38,434 (36,142–40,725) |
Prolonged LOS is defined as a hospital length of stay greater than the 90th percentile for the fusion procedure performed.
Inpatient medical complications included cardiovascular, pulmonary, or renal/urinary complications. We constructed a list of ICD-10-CM codes for each complication type (see Appendix C). To be a case, the patient’s hospital discharge needed to contain at least one complication code.
Inpatient surgical complications included hemorrhagic, infectious/wound, neurologic, and thromboembolic complications. We constructed a list of ICD-10-CM codes for each complication type (see Appendix C). To be a case, the patient’s hospital discharge needed to contain at least one complication code.
Total cost: Total charges for each hospital discharge were converted to total cost using hospital-specific cost-to-charge ratios, which are based on hospital accounting reports collected by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.