보건복지부 영문홈페이지

The result of the assessment of the death rate for stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, and liver cancer surgeries is disclosed for the first time

- About 50% of hospitals have less than 10 surgeries a year by cancer type; 51 hospitals come under the category of level 1 in terms of the surgery mortality rate for three types of cancer; stomach cancer, colorectal cancer and liver cancer.   

 

Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (Director Kang, Yoon Goo) executed the assessment of surgery death rates on medical institutions that have operated stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, and liver cancer, etc. that are the most common in Korea and disclosed the result for the first time.

* Surgery death rate: the rate of death that has taken place during hospitalization or within 30 days after cancer surgery

 

Cancer is no. 1 cause of death in Korea and results of treatments vary by institution. There is a high demand for disclosure of cancer death rate. Therefore, this assessment has been carried out.

 

For the assessment of cancer surgery death rates, medical care data collected from 302 hospitals that have operated surgeries for three types of cancers; stomach cancer, colorectal cancer and liver cancer that have high occurrence rates for the past one year of 2010 has been used. 

 

The number of cancer surgery cases greatly vary by medical institution and when it comes to the percentages at medical institutions that operate less than 10 surgeries, stomach cancer accounts for 51.6%, colorectal cancer is 52.6% and liver cancer accounts for 46.1%.

 

 

The rates of the death that a cancer patient dies during hospitalization or within 30 days after the surgery are 0.92% for stomach cancer, 1.63% for colorectal cancer and liver cancer for 1.88%. 

 

The assessment of the surgery death rate is done by comparing the “actual death rate”- the rate of patients that actually died after surgery and the “expected death rate” (the risk factor-adjusted mortality rate)– that adjusts patient risk factors in the concerned medical institutions.

 

* Causes for death risk by patient: factors affecting the mortality rate; cancer staging, accompanied surgeries, accompanies types of disease, gender, age, surgery type, height, weight, past medical history, and blood test, etc

* Expected mortality rate: The mortality rate expected by adjusting the composition (death risk factors) of patients at the concerned medical institution when it is assumed that individual medical institution carries out average treatment. 

 

Since it is difficult to give statistical significance to medical institutions that operate less than 10 surgeries a year, those institutions are classified as institutions “excluded from the level,” and the ones where patients’ risk factor records such as staging of cancer and accompanied surgeries, etc. cannot be identified are categorized as the institutions “excluded from the assessment.”

 

If the actual death rate is lower than the expected death rate by comparing the “actual death rate” and the “expected death rate”, it means that the concerned hospital has high quality medical service and if the actual death rate is higher than the expected death rate, the concerned hospital can be considered to have low quality health care service.

HIRA disclosed the mortality rate assessment levels by dividing them into two levels. If the “actual mortality rate” is lower than the upper limit in the range of the “expected mortality rate,” it is considered as “level 1,” and when the “actual mortality rate” is higher than the upper limit in the range of the “expected death rate,” it is disclosed as the “level 2.”

   By cancer type, numbers of medical institutions that fall into the category of level 1 are 93 for stomach cancer, 122 for colorectal cancer, and 56 for liver cancer. 51 medical institutions are subject to the level 1 for all three cancer types; stomach cancer, colorectal cancer and liver cancer and 38 medical institutions come under the level 1 for two cancer types.

 

※ Excluded from the level: Medical institutions that operate less than 10 surgeries a year

Excluded from the assessment: When it is impossible to estimate the expected death rate because records of patient risk factors (staging of cancer, accompanied surgeries, accompanied types of disease, etc) cannot be identified.

  HIRA disclosed the result of the assessment on the website (www.hira.or.kr) in detail including the assessment levels by medical institution, the actual death rate, the expected mortality rate, etc. 

 

The second assessment of the cancer surgery death rates will be disclosed in 2013 by collecting treatment data in 2012 regarding stomach cancer and liver cancer. For colorectal cancer, the assessment will be changed to a type incorporating treatment procedures and results and the treatments carried out in 2011 will be assessed and its result will be disclosed at the end of this year. In addition, it is planned that the assessment will be extended to breast cancer and lung cancer to expand the assessment areas.