A client I do research for wants statistics on a few surgeons. He is possibly facing a prostatectomy, and is the careful kind of person who wants all sorts of data in advance so that if he does need the surgery he knows who he wants to perform the procedure.
I’ve already gotten the data from propublica.org and checkbook.org, but he wants more information, and more recent information than these sites provide. Specifically, he’d like to know the number of open, laparoscopic and robot-assisted operations each has performed, and the success rate/complication rate for each type of procedure.
All the surgeons work out of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, and I will reach out to them for information. Before I do that though it would be nice to have any public information that is available.
Any ideas?
By the way, I’ve already pointed out to him that the success rate/complication rate are data that by themselves may not be truly indicative of surgeon skill – if one of the surgeons takes on the more complicated cases, his success rate may be lower than that of the others, but he may still be the best surgeon of the group.