Consumer Reports Is Rating Heart Bypass Surgical Groups - NYTimes.com

Image via CrunchBaseby Denise Grady
Medical groups that perform heart bypass surgery are now being rated alongside cars and toaster ovens in Consumer Reports.


In most parts of the country, data-based ratings of doctors are not available to patients. Only a few states, including New York, provide them.

The magazine published ratings of 221 surgical groups from 42 states online on Tuesday and will print them in its October issue. Groups are rated, not individual doctors. The groups receive one, two or three stars, for below average, average or above average. The scores were based on complication and survival rates, whether the groups used the best surgical technique and whether patients were being sent home with certain medicines that research has shown to be beneficial after this type of surgery.

For now, the information is available only to people who subscribe to Consumer Reports online or buy the magazine. But within a few months, the ratings should be posted and freely available to the public at the Web site of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (www.sts.org/), said Dr. Fred H. Edwards, the chairman of quality and research for the society, and medical director for cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Florida in Jacksonville. The society, which has been tracking surgeons’ performance since 1989, gave the information to Consumer Reports. More than 90 percent of the nation’s heart surgery programs participate in the society’s registry.
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