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Data On Risk, Quality Of Care Generally Unavailable

The January 2004 issue of the British Medical Journal highlights a study that found a serious lack of published information regarding the risk of various surgical procedures and the quality of care provided by doctors and hospitals.

Researchers examined publicly reported data about the quality of surgical care in California, the most populous state having the highest number of surgeries. They discovered data for only 12% of the types of surgeries performed.

The information they did find was only related to the quality of care at the hospital level. No information was found relating to the quality of individual surgeons, groups of surgeons or health plans. There was no information on post-surgical functional assessments such as how many patients were able to walk again after hip replacement surgery.

The researchers also found that the available information on hospital quality of care was from two to five years old.

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