Standardized Mortality Ratio for Dialysis Facilities

Standardized mortality ratio is defined to be the ratio of the number of deaths that occur for Medicare ESRD dialysis patients treated at a particular facility to the number of deaths that would be expected given the characteristics of the dialysis facility’s patients and the national norm for dialysis facilities. This measure is calculated as a ratio but can also be expressed as a rate.

When used for public reporting, the measure calculation will be restricted to facilities with greater than 3 expected deaths in the reporting year. This restriction is required to ensure patients cannot be identified due to small cell size.