Debatable Hospital Performance of Smoking Cessation Counseling After MI

Smoking is the foremost cause of preventable death, and smoking cessation is particularly important for patients who have had an acute MI. Thus, guidelines in the U.S. recommend smoking cessation counseling (SCC) for all smokers during hospital stays. Although documentation of SCC is used as a performance metric for quality of hospital care for acute MI, the association between a hospital’s performance of post-MI SCC and tobacco cessation rates after discharge has not been established. These investigators reviewed medical records to document SCC delivery to 889 consecutive smokers treated for acute MI at 19 U.S. hospitals from January 2003 through June 2004. They determined rates of patient-reported smoking cessation through 1 year after di…