Why is it so hard to know how good a doctor is?
There are lots of tools to help us gauge the quality of nearly any product or service we wish to buy, from cars to computers to restaurants. Yet there's no easy way to assess the quality of the doctors who take care of what's most important to us -- our health.
The Journal of Patient Safety reports that at least 200,000 people die each year from preventable medical errors, up from 1999 when a landmark report, "To Err Is Human," told Americans that more people die every year from medical errors -- 98,000 -- than from car accidents.
Yet, more than a decade later, many hospitals still don’t track the complication rates of individual surgeons -- or if they do, few hospitals share information that could help consumers make an informed decision.
Investigative journalists at Pro Publica set out to do what many hospitals are not: examine the data of nearly 17,000 surgeons nationwide to force improvements in the 11% of surgeons who account for about 25% of the complications. But their “surgeon scorecard” has its critics, who say the methodology is flawed, and the data not comprehensive enough to measure the true skill for any single doctor.
Hospitals have had a long time to work on this problem. At a time when data is abundant and the call for transparency is loud, are hospitals ready to open this conversation?
GUESTS:
- Marshall Allen - Reporter covering health care for Pro Publica, and co-author of “Making the Cut: Why Choosing the Right Surgeon Matters Even More Than You Know”
- Lisa Freeman - Executive director of the Connecticut Center for Patient Safety
- Dr. Rocco Orlando - General surgeon, Senior VP, Chief Medical Officer at Hartford Healthcare
- Dr. Peter Albertsen - Professor of Surgery, Chief and Program Director, Division of Urology, University of Connecticut
If you've been harmed by a medical error, you can access Marshall Allen's questionnaire here.
John Dankosky is the host of Where We Live. Chion Wolf is the technical producer.
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