A Good Doctor Can’t Save You from a Bad Hospital
Other things equal, the more operations a surgeon has performed, the higher the quality of his surgery. But a surgeon’s experience is still less important than the hospital system and its surgical protocols for patient mortality.
Interesting post.
The implications are immense. The outcomes for a surgeon could vary depending on which hospital he or she was working in on a given day. This also makes me wonder if quality could not be improved by having surgeons work in only one hospital with the same surgical staff that has trained and worked together as a team. Basically, any variables that could be removed from the process would likely boost quality.
This is yet another reason for repeal of the Stark Amendment, which makes financial gain sharing that aligns physician and hospital interests illegal.
How do you you compare hospitals without penalizing those that attract more challenging cases?
Answer to Bart: by adjusting the totals for case mix. Granted, the calculaion isn’t perfect, but this is done all the time.