No hospital would benefit from being the first to publish statistics, so none of them do.
Hospital statistics have been published for several years now on Hospital compare. Similar programs exist for outpatient and nursing home quality metrics. This is largely due to effort by the Obama administration.
(Of course, this might just shift the “inadequate equilibrium” question to: if these statistics are published, how come so few people use them?)
That’s a great question and yes, there is generally some amount of risk adjustment performed. To take the example Eliezer used early in this post: you can find much more information then you probably wanted about the risk adjustment for central line associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) here .
It just occurred to me that your link is likely to be an Incredibly Important(tm) tool for the weird sort of person who might actually be interested in themselves/friends/family not dying during a procedure.
(In opposed to just being interested in signaling how caring we are, or seeking medicine to feel cared for.)
Seriously, if bookmarking and remembering a tab can change your life expectency by years, that’s one hell of a cost/benefit ratio. I’d put absurdly high odds on it being worth picking out a default hospital beforehand, so you don’t have to make a split-second decision in an emergency. Like, you just never see low hanging fruit with cost/benefit ratios that high in day-to-day life.
Like, maybe print off the info for a couple choices, and magnet them to the fridge with the closest one on top and the best one underneath? Add closest address to your GPS, and drive the route once so you know that you know it? I’m pretty sure this could be optimized further with more thought.
Also, I can’t find it now, but I think I recall Robin Hanson commenting on proximity of home to the nearest hospital being a major determinent in life expectency, along with things like rural living. I think someone was musing about whether property values were any higher near hospitals, but I don’t remember if they got an answer or what it was.
Hospital statistics have been published for several years now on Hospital compare. Similar programs exist for outpatient and nursing home quality metrics. This is largely due to effort by the Obama administration.
(Of course, this might just shift the “inadequate equilibrium” question to: if these statistics are published, how come so few people use them?)
Do you know if they normalize for case difficulty? If a hospital patients seems like it will get worse outcomes.
That’s a great question and yes, there is generally some amount of risk adjustment performed. To take the example Eliezer used early in this post: you can find much more information then you probably wanted about the risk adjustment for central line associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) here .
It just occurred to me that your link is likely to be an Incredibly Important(tm) tool for the weird sort of person who might actually be interested in themselves/friends/family not dying during a procedure.
(In opposed to just being interested in signaling how caring we are, or seeking medicine to feel cared for.)
Practical, actionable advice ideas:
Seriously, if bookmarking and remembering a tab can change your life expectency by years, that’s one hell of a cost/benefit ratio. I’d put absurdly high odds on it being worth picking out a default hospital beforehand, so you don’t have to make a split-second decision in an emergency. Like, you just never see low hanging fruit with cost/benefit ratios that high in day-to-day life.
Like, maybe print off the info for a couple choices, and magnet them to the fridge with the closest one on top and the best one underneath? Add closest address to your GPS, and drive the route once so you know that you know it? I’m pretty sure this could be optimized further with more thought.
Also, I can’t find it now, but I think I recall Robin Hanson commenting on proximity of home to the nearest hospital being a major determinent in life expectency, along with things like rural living. I think someone was musing about whether property values were any higher near hospitals, but I don’t remember if they got an answer or what it was.
I just did this and it was pretty easy! And in fact I decided to change the hospital I go to by default.
If you pick out your default hospital it might be worthwhile to share the information on facebook with a nice hashtag.
Loren ipsum