When will patients start reviewing quality data before choosing their doctors and hospitals? The answer has been “soon” for several years, but “soon” may finally be the right answer. If you doubt it, check out the Commonwealth Fund’s new site, “Why Not The Best?” The central premise of the healthcare transparency movement has been that putting ...

Medicare is now reporting actual risk-adjusted mortality rates for pneumonia, MI, and heart failure. The topic must be important, since ''Talk of the Nation'' spent 30 minutes yesterday interviewing Don Berwick and me about it… on the day of Hillary’s speech!To listen to the show, click here. Also, here’s an article from USA Today that got the ...

As I mentioned in my last post, these should be the best of times for ''Infection Preventionists'' (formerly known as Infection Control Officers). After years of trying to get someone – anyone – to pay attention to their work, their day in the sun has finally arrived. But they are far from a joyful bunch. Why?In my talk to 4,000 members of the ...

Last week, Medicare added patient satisfaction data to its hospital reporting website. This is progress, but it raises an interesting question: should patient satisfaction scores be case-mix adjusted?The motivation to include patient satisfaction data comes from the Institute of Medicine’s inclusion of “patient-centeredness” as one key component ...

Stuff this week that caught my eye: Does medical tourism harm the natives? Are all those CT scans destroying more than our budgets? Are nocturnalists at risk for more than decubs? Will Medicare need to cut hospital payments to fuel P4P? Answers: yes, yes, probably, and duh.Yesterday, NPR’s All Things Considered described the dark side of medical ...