Did you know you can look up important information about a hospital or surgeon before becoming a patient? The non-profit group Pro-Publica has compiled data into an easy to use website that will provide data on complication rates for eight elective surgeries from knee and hip replacement to gall bladder removal. It also takes a look at death rates and ranks complications as low, medium or high.
“It’s a good place to start and it’s a good place to start educating ourselves and thinking about what the right place is for care,” said Mary Kay Clunies-Ross from Washington State Hospital Asscoiation.
While Clunies-Ross believes website is a good starting point, she feels it shouldn’t be the only thing patients should use when making medical decisions.
“You may have a hospital that has developed an expertise, may take on more complicated patients or they’ve developed an expertise that’s really unique in the region. They may be pulling people in from all over the state and other states,” explained Clunies-Ross.
A search of surgeons will also show complication information, how many patients they’ve had and the number of services performed for the year 2012. The American College of Surgeons isn’t impressed with the database. In a statement it said,
“The American College of Surgeons strongly believes that patients and their families deserve to have meaningful information available to assist them in selecting the right surgeon. Last week, two public interest groups launched websites promising to assist with surgeon evaluation. Unfortunately, the usefulness of the information they shared is questionable for a number of reasons.
The two groups used differing methodologies, including how many years of Medicare data they reviewed, procedures studied, and rating scales used. A patient who visited both websites could potentially find the same surgeon rated very differently or only find a surgeon on one of the two websites.
Use of clinically validated data would have more fully taken into account the severity of the patient’s condition when assessing surgeon performance. For example, an 80-year-old diabetic patient with heart disease undergoing a gall bladder removal faces many more challenges than a healthy 40-year-old undergoing the same operation. Without factoring in surgeons’ success rate with the more challenging patients, the potential for wrongly directing patients away from these surgeons certainly increases. And as troubling, some insurers might restrict access to these surgeons in the future.”
While our options are often limited by insurance, Clunies-Ross said information like this is a great way to exercise some choice in your decision making.
“That’s when you talk to your provider say so listen where is the best place for me, where are you going to be, do you have a suggestion of a surgeon i should be working with,” explained Clunies-Ross.
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