Volume Alone Does Not Predict Quality Outcomes in Hospitals Performing Pediatric Cardiac Surgery

The 2024 James S. Tweddell Memorial Paper for Congenital Cardiac Surgery compared mortality of 25,749 congenital surgery operations performed at 235 hospitals between 2016 and 2019, identified in the Kid’s Inpatient Database (KID). Hospitals were divided into 140 low-volume hospitals performing fewer than 103 cases per year, 64 middle-volume, and 31 high-volume hospitals performing more than 194 cases per year. There was no statistically significant difference in risk-adjusted in-hospital mortality when comparing low, middle, and high-volume centers. A total of 53 percent of low-volume hospitals were low-mortality hospitals, and 32 percent of high-volume centers were high-mortality hospitals.