Ron Winslow on the WSJ Health Blog posts insight on a recent JAHA study of preventable deaths resulting from cardiac bypass surgery. The study finds that 32% of CABG mortalities were preventable.
An interesting note from the article is that “Typical report cards do not provide the necessary detail to direct surgeons where to focus their quality improvement efforts.”
Of perhaps even more interest is some follow-up Ron got from one of the co-authors:
“It ends up being one preventable death per surgeon every two years,” he said. “The numbers are very small. However, they’re still preventable.”