Wednesday, December 06, 2006

This sounds like a bad idea to me – From the Boston Globe: “Death rates per doctor to be listed – State to release data on heart surgeons

The reason why is in paragraph four: “In New York, where mortality data for individual cardiac surgeons have been released since 1991, state officials credit the program with lowering death rates, but surgeons in Massachusetts are worried that public reporting could hurt care by discouraging doctors from taking high-risk patients who are more likely to die.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Different doctors handle patients. An cardiovascular doctor does not handle gunshot victims, but Trauma doctors do. Just releasing deaths/1000 patients would not tell you how good a doctor is unless its something like ear/nose/throat specialist vs. foot doctors.

Trauma doctors will always have the worst records because they deal with patients who have huge injuries and are often delivered on deaths door. No other surgen specialty deals with that on a regular basis.