Safety in Numbers: Cancer Surgeries in California Hospitals (ovarian cancer not included)

CHCF.org

Some hospitals perform one or two brain cancer surgeries; others do hundreds. Small volumes can mean greater risk of poor patient outcomes. See the numbers for 11 cancers at hospitals across California.

Highlights include:

• There is an association between low hospital surgery volume and higher mortality and complication rates for the following 11 cancers: bladder, brain, breast, colon, esophagus, liver, lung, pancreas, prostate, rectum, and stomach.
• The majority of California's hospitals performed surgery for one or more of these 11 cancers only once or twice in 2014.
• Of cancer patients who had surgery at a hospital that did a small number of those surgeries in 2014, more than 70% were within 50 miles of a hospital performing higher volumes.*
• The 249 hospitals that performed only one or two of a particular procedure in 2014 are mostly urban but also rural, and they are in equal numbers small (50%) and large (50%).