Do Claims-based Comorbidities Adequately Capture Case Mix for Surgical Site Infections?

Abstract

Claims-based risk-adjustment models for surgical site infections in THA and TKA appear to be adequately calibrated but lack predictive discrimination, particularly with TKAs. The addition of clinical risk factors improves the discriminative ability of the models to a moderate degree; however, addition of clinical factors did not change calibrations, as the models showed reasonable degrees of calibration. When used in the clinical setting, the predictive performance of claims-based risk-adjustment models may be improved further with inclusion of additional clinical data elements.