21 Aug
A New "Hospital Compare" Tool From the Dep. of Health and Human Services
Boy, are tools like this potentially misleading. This one lets you see the mortality rates for a variety of conditions from your local hospitals. Here’s the obvious, ridiculous danger of such stats. I’m sure the tiny little hospital that I used in northern Maine growing up has great rates—because if I were really sick, I’d drive to Bangor, or Portland. Similarly, If you had a serious life-threatening heart condition, or extreme complications due to a skin infection, you wouldn’t go to your regional hospital, you’d go to a specialist facility—where lots of folks with complicated conditions die each year because they are the worst cases.
It’s kinda like looking at the fielding percentage of an essentially immobile shortstop versus that of Ozzie Smith, or Shawon Dunston when he patrolled SS for the Cubs. They had worse fielding percentages because they tried for—and got their gloves on—more balls than most shortstops can even reach. I’m sure the same is true for many of the specialist care facilities in the U.S. that have somewhat higher mortality rates. You can’t get an error on a ball you don’t reach for.
And that’s gotta be the worst analogy in Datasnob history!
