Invited Commentary on “Fragmentation of Practice: The Adverse Effect of Surgeons Moving Around”

Innumerable factors contribute to postoperative outcome. Various patient, physician, health system, and infrastructure-level variables have been shown to influence these outcomes and impact health care cost and delivery.1 However, the level to which surgeon-driven factors, such as procedure-specific case volume across different hospitals, and familiarity with a specific operating room team/hospital system affect outcomes is relatively unknown. While it has been previously shown that outcomes improve with increased case volumes, the potential patient, surgeon, and system-level impact of surgeons operating at multiple hospitals has yet to be studied.
Source: Surgery - Category: Surgery Authors: Source Type: research