To quote a well-known advertiser here in Atlanta — “An educated consumer is our best customer.” As things begin to change in healthcare, this may also be an appropriate motto as well.

Case and point: Some interesting news from the Boston Globe discusses that soon patients in Massachusetts will be given a resource for finding out the success/failure rates of the heart surgeons in their community. Joining patients in three other states, patients in Massachusetts soon will be able to log on to easily access the death rates for 50+ surgeons who perform heart bypass procedures in their state.

In New York, similar information is available to patients and many credit this system with improving the quality of care that patients receive. Others who are more skeptical, worry that this availablity of this information will result in physicians turning down complex medical cases with high risk of mortality– just to keep their stats high. If this does indeed happen, this this information and service will become inadequate for helping patients determine the best surgeon for them.

I think the key information here for patients is to understand that quality care is a complex thing to measure. Death rates are only one part of the picture. Severity of disease, number of co-existing medical diseases, age, length of illness and other patient related factors can quickly muddy the waters when evaluating quality care.

One must remember, that good physicians treat the patient and not the disease. The disease is just the obstacle that prevents the patient from being well. Good treatment means that patient and provider collaborate on a plan to overcome the obstacle. Usually this plan incorporates a series of targeted solutions for individual manifestations of the disease. Thus, simple death rates can guide you when you are selecting a physician, but be warned, they will not provide the entire picture.

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