Out-of-Hospital 30-day Deaths After Cardiac Surgery Are Often Underreported

Operative mortality (in-hospital during the index admission or within 30 days of the procedure after discharge) is commonly used as a quality of care measure for public reporting of cardiac surgery outcomes, but the ability to capture out-of-hospital deaths accurately remains undetermined. The objective of the study was to estimate the impact of incomplete reporting of out-of-hospital deaths on hospital risk-adjusted mortality and outlier...