Whether it’s a hernia repair or heart bypass, doctors with a lot of experience performing a given operation tend to have better results. The problem for patients in choosing a physician has been finding out which ones have the know-how.
In a little-noticed decision last week, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of a consumer group that sued the Health and Human Services Department to allow disclosure of specific data about doctors from the Medicare claims database.
Doctors are worried that Medicare files do not account for the severity of the cases that individual physicians may handle.
Patients are worried that they might trust their health and their lives to a professional who is less than competent.
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