Anyone who has seen a local 5K run knows runners vary in skill. Some run swiftly and with ease, and some do not. Mastery of doctoring is no different. By teaching the basics, medical training attempts to level the playing field, but it remains uncontroversial to say some doctors are better than others.
From my first day of private practice, I've despised medicine's lack of meritocracy. Although we can usually discover outliers and frauds (a rarity), neither patients nor referring doctors have a reliable way to judge the skills of a specialist or surgeon.
Two reporters from ProPublica, an investigative-journalism group, sought to remedy this injustice. They used exclusive access to a trove of Medicare billing data to form a user-friendly online SurgeonScorecard. They promoted the work with a sensational video and embraced their conclusion: that your surgeon matters, and we can tell them apart.
They are wrong. They cannot. The ProPublica SurgeonScorecard fails to deliver on its promise.
I believe ProPublica should admit they released the scorecard prematurely and consider taking it down until it is improved. It is not ready for prime time. Its risks are greater than its benefits. They should not feel bad. Mistakes are okay.
