It’s hard for patients to choose a good hospital. It shouldn’t be.

Selecting the right hospital to receive care can save your life, lower your risks of getting a complication, or even reduce your financial hardship. The problem is that it’s extremely hard for patients to make that judgment. Sometimes, the data they need to select the best hospital for their care doesn’t exist. In other cases, it’s hard or impossible for the public to find. For instance, if you’re getting an esophagus resection or other high-risk procedure at a hospital that rarely performs it, your chance of death could be several times greater than if you went to a high-volume facility. This finding is consistent with decades’ worth of studies linking higher surgical volumes to better outcomes. You would think that if it’s so consequential, consumers should be able to find how many cases their doctors or hospitals have done, and compare that against a threshold signaling proficiency. Yet that data is rarely available. California is a recent exception, where hospital-specific volumes for 11 cancer procedures are now online. Lo and behold, in a majority of hospitals, at least one of these procedures was performed only once or twice that year. Why can’t patients elsewhere get that kind of information? Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Physician Hospital Source Type: blogs