The North American Spine Society released a statement in support of ProPublica journalists’ efforts to bring transparency to health care through ProPublica’s “Dollars to Doctors” feature, as well as its newly-released “Surgeon Scorecard” database, which provides complication rates for more than 17,000 U.S. surgeons.
Patients should use the scorecard as only one piece of information in making a decision about surgery, according to Charles Mick, MD, a former NASS president.
Complication, death rates listed
“ProPublica utilized a vast Medicare administrative database to stratify physicians and hospitals according to complication rates. They present this complex data in an easy to search, easy to interpret, patient friendly format. Individual, risk-adjusted provider statistics for eight common procedures may be viewed and compared with that of other providers by location and by procedure,” Mick told Spine Surgery Today.
