Posted on 12/06/2006 10:43:34 AM PST by A. Pole
Massachusetts health officials have decided to publicize the patient death rates for individual heart surgeons, the first time the state will release information on the quality of care provided by individual doctors --not just by hospitals and physicians' groups .
Beginning Dec. 18, it will be possible to go to a website and look up the mortality rates for 55 surgeons who perform cardiac bypass operations. About 4,000 patients had bypass surgery at 14 Massachusetts hospitals in 2004, according to the state's most recent figures. It is one of the most common operations.
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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.
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Dr. George Tolis Jr., the new chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Caritas St. Elizabeth's who was a surgeon in New York, said the program has not improved care. He said some surgeons have low mortality rates because they refuse to operate on high-risk patients.
Tolis said the problem is that states' analyses cannot fully account for all of a patient's risk factors, so that surgeons who take higher-risk patients still end up looking like they get worse results.
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(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
How nice. Now some doctors will be reluctant to perform risky procedures.
This is a good example how the market mechanisms might lead to the less medical care for the sicker people.
Outlaw scalpels, and only outlaws will have scalpels.
Never mind. Already the case.
Exactly.
"Some"? I am afraid this is an understatement :(
Wouldn't you presume that
all of a doctor's patients die?
Good point.
"Massachusetts health officials have decided . . ." is hardly an example of a "market mechanism."
But if you want to give people market choice they need to have access to the verified data, don't they?
I suppose that depends on whether you want your (Massachusetts) citizens to have access to more doctors, or less.
Let's not forget to list death rates per human.
Surgeons are not afraid of medical risk, they are afraid of tort lawyers in league with state attorneys general, who use government power to threaten them with endless lawsuits - not for negligence - but over matters of professional judgment. This results in excessively high insurance premiums, which many specialists are increasingly unable to afford. That's not a "market mechanism", it's social engineering with Mafia tactics.
Can't they put in some kind of "degree of difficulty" rating like they do in diving competitions so the mortality rate would be in context?
It seems there should be some way to weight individual patients based on known risk factors in order to even out the score. Obviously, a simple tally of deaths doesn't tell the whole story. Keeping a high-risk patient alive should carry a greater reward than keeping a low-risk patient alive.
...that major hospitals in this country,be they in Boston,Manhattan,Philly,DC,Chicago,LA,etc,act as referral centers for the region in which they're located and,in some cases,for the world (the hospital where I worked got many,many patients from all over the country and the world). The fact that they're "referral centers" means that they get the sickest patients.These are patients that are so sick that they stand little chance of survival at "Western Kansas Medical Center" but have at least some chance if moved to Barnes Hospital in St Louis...for example.
The doctors drawing up these lists know this but the average "civilian" doesn't know nearly enough about the practice of medicine to understand it.
They are trying to do that. But it might be close to impossible to do it accurately and fairly. If you are a doctor, it will always be easier for you to stay away from unsafe cases. No deaths, no problem!
He lived, but if he didn't make it wouldn't the more qualified doctor and hospital get stuck with the higher death rate?
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