Comorbidities and Risk Adjustment: Role in Surgery

摘要

Risk adjustment is the process of accounting for the differences in comorbid conditions between patients. It is widely accepted that comorbid factors play a large role in determining outcomes following surgery. These are particularly important issues for surgeons, as it is becoming more common for outcomes to be compared between providers, hospitals, and procedures. In fact, national policy level changes many depend on the appropriate application of risk adjustment for surgical issues.It is imperative that surgeons are educated about the methods of risk adjustment. This article introduces the topic of risk adjustment and discusses its application in the context of surgery. The goals are to provide groundwork for understanding the reasoning behind risk adjustment, discuss some of the methods that are currently used, and present examples through two sample cases.