I disagree though because a great deal of evidence suggests that hospitals make medicine safer. Surgeries done in hospitals and surgery centers lead to better outcomes than those in office. There is more learning from mistakes in hospitals. It is much easier to get hospitals to change their privilege cards than it is to get an equivalent number of surgery centers to change. Hospitals are more careful about their policies because they have bigger numbers of patients coming through. And forget about regulation of in-office surgery because it is legal for dermatologists to be doing brain surgery in their offices in most states. Right? I think the way to make medicine better and safer is to take power away from individual doctors and have doctors follow evidence-based best practice guidelines.

There needs to be much more transparency in medicine regarding outcomes, costs, etc. There is no free market competition here. It is completely ridiculous to have so many EMR requirements when even getting basic information, like on how many of a given surgery are done in the US, seems next to impossible (if someone knows how to do this, let me know). Forget about numbers for adverse events. Numbers used in quality research, like how many patients die or are readmitted within 30 days, are only so useful.