•May 4, 2016•

By Trudy Lieberman
Rural Health News Service

If you need a risky, complicated surgery, would you go to a hospital or surgeon who had performed the procedure only a time or two before?

Most people would say no, but the evidence indicates otherwise. Patients do go to doctors and hospitals that have seldom performed the procedures they need. Yet, for almost 40 years, study after study has shown that patients’ death rates were significantly lower for surgeries done at hospitals that were experienced in the procedure.

The same is true for physicians. In March, for example, a large study of patients undergoing thyroid surgeries found that they had an 87 percent increase in the odds of a complication if their surgeon had previously performed only one thyroid surgery, but only a 3 percent chance if the surgeon had performed between 21 and 25 surgeries.

“The number of surgeries a doctor or hospital performs has a major impact on your likelihood of surviving or thriving,” says Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C., organization, which supports the use of transparent data to improve hospital safety and outcomes.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.