BMJ  2007;335:839-840 (27 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.39374.627373.BE

Letters

Surgical mortality

Summary of other responses

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Westaby et al make a good case for not publishing unreliable outcome data based on hospital episode statistics (HES),¹ but they miss what ought to be two important issues, says Stephen Black, a management consultant in London.

The first concerns how statistical information is presented. "Standard practice gives information to the public and to experts in a form almost guaranteed to mislead. This leads to the erroneous conclusion that members of the public can't be trusted to interpret complex statistics: but they can when they are framed and presented in the right way."

The second concerns why the information is poor quality in the first place.

Ashok Handa, consultant vascular surgeon in Oxford, agrees: "All surgical units should prospectively collect activity and outcome data. Clinicians should insist on and hospital managers should provide adequate administrative support for this to be a matter of routine.

"The cardiac surgical community to their . . . [Full text of this article]

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