Comparative Reports on Surgical Care
The following reports are examples of comparative information on the quality of surgical care by individual surgeons and surgeon groups.
Report Title: Surgeon Scorecard
Website: https://projects.propublica.org/surgeons/. Accessed July 21, 2022.
Subject: Surgeons and hospitals
Developer: ProPublica
Sponsor Type: Private news organization
Location: United States
Synopsis: Surgeon Scorecard is a searchable report on the performance of surgeons across the United States. The website has information on complication rates for more than 17,000 surgeons who performed common elective procedures—such as gallbladder removal, prostate removals and prostate resections, spinal fusions, and knee and hip replacements—on Medicare patients over a 5-year period. Surgeon Scorecard uses two measures to identify harm to elective surgical patients: in-hospital mortality and readmission within 30 days of discharge with a diagnosis identified by experts as a likely complication of surgery. The website reports on the number of times a surgeon has performed a procedure, the number of complications, and the complication rate. A surgeon’s reported score includes performance at all hospitals operated in, with a list of the hospitals’ names.
Report Title: The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Congenital Heart Surgery Database Public Reporting
Website: http://www.sts.org/congenital-public-reporting-module-search. Accessed July 21, 2022.
Subject: Cardiothoracic surgery groups and hospital-based cardiothoracic departments
Developer: The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS)
Developer Type: Professional association
Location: United States
Synopsis: STS Congenital Heart Surgery Database (CHSD) is the largest clinical registry in North America that enables cardiothoracic surgeons and hospitals to voluntarily report scores for congenital heart surgery. The Database contains more than 275,000 congenital heart surgery procedure records and currently has more than 650 participating physicians, including surgeons and anesthesiologists. Star rating for hospitals are based on the overall observed-to-expected operative mortality ratio for all patients undergoing pediatric and/or congenital cardiac surgery. STS uses a method called STAT Mortality Categories, which compares the mortality rates between programs by difficulty of the operation. Operations are divided into 5 categories, one to five in order of increasing difficulty.
Report Title: Cardiac Surgery in New York State
Website: http://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/diseases/cardiovascular/. Accessed July 21, 2022.
Subject: Cardiac surgeons and hospitals
Developer: New York Department of Health
Developer Type: State agency
Location: New York
Synopsis: These reports include mortality and readmission rates after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery and valve repair or replacement surgery, and preliminary information on transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) in non-federal New York State (NYS) hospitals. Reports look at the performance of cardiologists who performed at least 200 cardiac surgeries during the reporting period. Cardiologists who performed fewer than 200 cardiac surgeries but at least one per year during the reporting period are grouped together in the hospital in which the procedure was performed. The website also has additional cardiovascular disease data and statistics.
Report Title: Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) Public Reports
Website: http://www.phc4.org/reports/. Accessed July 21, 2022.
Subject: Surgeons and hospitals
Developer: Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council
Sponsor Type: State agency
Location: Pennsylvania and Delaware
Synopsis: The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) publishes a number of reports on the quality and cost of cardiac surgeries (including pediatric and congenital heart surgery), knee and hip replacements, and orthopedic surgeries performed in hospitals in Pennsylvania and Delaware. Although not all of these reports are current, they offer useful illustrations of comparative information on the quality of surgical care by surgeons and hospitals.
The PHC4 reports on coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery displays quality scores for the volume of patients, readmission rates, and inpatient mortality rates of individual surgeons. Symbols are used to indicate whether the surgeon’s rate was higher, lower, or the same as the expected rate. Additional information reported for hospitals includes hospital charges and average Medicare payments. Hospitals and surgeons are given an opportunity to submit comments regarding their data.
