Course Description

Presenters:

Nirav Shaw, MD, MPH

Marshall Allen

After New York State started publicly reporting mortality rates for cardiac surgery more than two decades ago, a number of poor performing surgeons stopped practicing or left the state and mortality rates dropped. And, when University of Utah Health Care became the first medical center in the country to post all its patient reviews online, it noted dramatic quality improvements and saw more business. Last year, ProPublica published a widely discussed online database of death and complication rates for about 17,000 surgeons performing several elective procedures in Medicare. Yet, outside of a few shining examples, broader efforts to improve health care quality through greater transparency have yielded mixed results and met with fierce resistance by hospitals, doctors and lobbyists. This webinar will explore the promise of transparency to improve health care outcomes, while asking why such efforts haven’t always met expectations.