Some readers have noted that, although many prostate surgeries are performed at cancer centers, several, such as Memorial Sloan Kettering, seemed to be missing from our new Surgeon Scorecard database.
We investigated and discovered the cause, which related to the eternal mysteries of Medicare bureaucracy. Although the data for cancer centers was included in our analysis and we’ve calculated adjusted complication rates for the surgeons who work there, the database we were using to match hospital names to our data didn’t include the name of five cancer centers. This is because they are reimbursed differently by Medicare than other hospitals.
Because of the missing hospital names, some surgeon pages in the database showed an error message when readers clicked on them.
We have identified the missing hospital names. This fixes the bug in the interactive database, and it means we now have profiles for the following cancer centers:
