Surgical Complication Rates just got Simple: MedicineBall Is the New MoneyBall

By JORDAN SHLAIN, MD In an age where the importance of data, statistics and predictive modeling can win games for baseball teams and make money for high-frequency traders, the last bastion of opacity is in the midst of getting a whopping dose of sunshine. Every modern industry uses detailed information, mostly via the Internet, to lie out their foundational strategies for gaining market share and building their brands.  Fortress medicine has received a shot over the bow regarding the power of data and how they will need to craft a strategy that includes the bright light of outcomes into their institutions.  Propublica, in a seminal article, Making the Cut, shows us the power of transparency in complications rates during surgery.  Doctors and their patients, since the dawn of medicine, have existed in a world without clarity around outcomes.  What Yelp has done for small business and Zagat has done for fine restaurants, CMS just did for the medical profession….and it just might be a needed dose of datacillin to start an honest conversation about what this all means. Medicine has been grappling with complications, death and disability, in the private halls of hospitals.  These are called “M & m” rounds – and they occur on a regular basis.  The goal of these rounds is to dissect major mistakes (mortality – capital ‘M’) and minor ones too (morbidity, little ‘m’).  These are meetings among peers, in strict confidence, to share mistakes as a mechanism o...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: THCB Source Type: blogs