Despite the limitations, overall the results of our study indicate that
examining associations with mortality amenable to health care could be
useful as a guide to developing approaches to improve population
health – for example, delivering more timely, effective, and safe preventive
and therapeutic care. The indicators thus far associated with
amenable mortality may just be sentinel indicators of overall health
system performance rather than causally related to amenable mortality.
Nonetheless, improving some of the indicators associated with
amenable mortality might lead to reduced amenable mortality rates
and should be tested. Given the importance of the modifiable indicators associated with amenable mortality, it is worth improving performance
on each whether or not such improvement is associated with a
detectable reduction in amenable mortality.