Health Report - Full Program Podcast

In Australia, the UK and the US schemes are being implemented to track the outcomes of surgeons — that is, following up with the people surgeons operate on to see whether they experience complications. The idea is that measuring these outcomes can help us see the strengths and weaknesses between hospitals, and improve in areas where we aren't up to scratch. But not everyone's a fan. Some surgeons argue such schemes will encourage doctors to avoid risky patients or 'game the system' by tweaking how their patient data is entered into the system. Then there's the question of how widely the data should be shared. Should it be just surgeons who get to see how well they perform and compare, or do patients have a right to know too?