Quality improvement through public reporting: The surgeon scorecard – are we there yet?

Abstract

As national healthcare reform continues to place greater emphasis on providing high value care, measures designed to track clinical performance remain relatively overlooked. To that extent, several organizations have attempted to create objective grading systems to evaluate orthopaedic surgeon quality and performance. While attempting to address these issues, ProPublica’s Surgeon Scorecard has provoked national debate among patient advocates and healthcare providers. The methodology behind the Scorecard was developed at the Harvard School of Public Health with an aim to provide a more robust means of comparing surgical performance and outcomes for patients and healthcare organizations. Currently, the Scorecard assesses eight elective surgical procedures, including total knee and hip arthroplasty, through the use of the Medicare Claims Dataset. The impact of the Scorecard on orthopaedic practice has yet to be established. In this discussion, we analyze the Scorecard from the perspective of various stakeholders to identify its benefits and shortcomings, as well as offer direction for further improvement.