Failure to rescue in frail surgical patients

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GEMSSTAR R03 Abstract Frailty is the occurrence of decreased reserve and functional decline with resultant vulnerability and poor outcomes in recovery from a stressor usually in older patients. Although frailty is distinct from age, it is highly correlated, and as the US population ages, the prevalence of frailty will likely increase. The growing prevalence of older patient population and frailty will place greater demands on surgical services. One third of all patients aged 65-85 will undergo a major surgical procedure within the last year of life. To provide the best quality of care, it is imperative that healthcare providers and hospitals develop strategies to meet these growing demands and to ensure higher-quality care for geriatric surgical patients. Recent data demonstrate that frailty is a powerful predictor of increased perioperative mortality, morbidity and cost in various surgical populations. Failure to rescue (FTR) refers to a failure to prevent death from treatable complications during hospitalization (e.g. major hemorrhage after surgery) and is used a metric for hospital quality. Our study aims to show that frailty impacts failure to rescue independent of other hospital factors. We also think that certain hospitals are better at rescuing frail patients and we aim to identify characteristics of such hospitals. Although intuitive, this association has not been studied so far. This will be the first study to examine the interplay of frailty, which is primarily a patient characteristic, and FTR- a quality indicator believed to hospital dependent. The proposal also entails a detailed professional development plan with training that will be essential both for successful completion of this research and toward Dr. Arya's career development and transition to aging and surgical quality research. Significant findings from this study will change the way failure to rescue research is used for hospital quality and will lay the groundwork for development of new interventions or protocols on a patient as well as hospital level to improve surgical outcomes in frail patients.