[Excerpt from auhtors]Aim: This paper reports on structures and processes of hospital care influencing 30-day mortality for acute medical patients.Conclusion: Just as hospitals and clinicians caring for patients focus carefully on completing accurate diagnosis and appropriate and effective interventions, so too should hospitals carefully plan and manage structures and processes of care such as the proportion of Registered Nurses in the staff mix, percentage of baccalaureate-prepared nurses, and routine use of care maps to minimize unnecessary patient death.