Importance: Individualized risk prediction tools have an important role as decision aids for use by patients and surgeons before surgery. Patient-centered outcomes should be incorporated into such tools to widen their appeal and improve their usability.
Objective: To develop a patient-centered outcome for the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) Surgical Risk Calculator, a web-based, individualized risk prediction tool.
Design, setting, and participants: Retrospective cohort study using data from the ACS NSQIP, a national clinical data registry. A total of 973 211 patients from July 2010 to June 2012, encompassing 392 hospitals, were used in this analysis.
Main outcomes and measures: Risk of discharge to a postacute care setting.
Results: The overall rate of discharge to postacute care was 8.8%. Significant predictors of discharge to postacute care included being 85 years or older (odds ratio [OR] = 9.17; 95% CI, 8.84-9.50), the presence of septic shock (OR = 2.43; 95% CI, 2.20-2.69) or ventilator dependence (OR = 2.81; 95% CI, 2.56-3.09) preoperatively, American Society of Anesthesiologists class of 4 or 5 (OR = 3.59; 95% CI, 3.46-3.71), and totally dependent functional status (OR = 2.27; 95% CI, 2.11-2.44). The final model predicted risk of discharge to postacute care with excellent accuracy (C statistic = 0.924) and calibration (Brier score = 0.05).
Conclusions and relevance: Individualized risk of discharge to postacute care can be predicted with excellent accuracy. This outcome will be incorporated into the ACS NSQIP Surgical Risk Calculator.