If high-risk coronary artery bypass patients were channeled away from hospitals with higher-than-expected death rates, the overall risk-adjusted death rate following bypass surgery could be cut by about half, according to UC researchers Harold S. Luft and Patrick S. Romano. The researchers studied actual and expected death rates for two-, three- and four-year periods among high-risk patients undergoing bypass surgery at 115 California hospitals. Their findings are of interest to physicians, consumers and insurers who want to select a hospital with predictably good outcomes, according to the researchers, who recently published their work in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "This information could be used internally by the hospital staff to examine their practices and to determine whether there are, in fact, quality-of-care problems," says Romano, a general internist at the UC Davis Medical Center.