Drs. Laurent Glance, Andrew Dick, J. Wayne Meredith, and Dana Mukamel have had their paper, "Variation in Hospital Complication Rates and Failure-to-Rescue for Trauma Patients", published in the April 2011 issue of Annals of Surgery.

The objective of the study was to examine whether failure-to-rescue is an important mechanism driving outcome differences across low- and high-mortality hospitals caring for trauma patients.  The authors' findings suggest that the primary driver of differences in hospital quality for trauma patients is failure-to-rescue as opposed to differences in complication rates.  Achieving lower mortality rates in trauma patients may require reducing both the incidence of major complications and the incidence of death after major complications.