With the influx of apps rating anything from where you buy your lunch to a trip you went on, physicians needs to track their patients' outcomes so future patients can make informed healthcare decisions, according to The Hill.
Here are eight things to know:
1. While physicians are required to report their outcomes, a lack of available data exists for the public to review.
2. Of the ratings that do exist, many do not get into the specifics as to whether a certain physician can treat various conditions.
3. In 2004, a report showed 100 percent of patients receiving heart transplants at the two leading American centers survived for at least a year. All six of the patients receiving transplant at the worst treatment center died within a year. A discrepancy does exist and data must reflect these results.
4. Data should not merely reflect life and death outcomes, but need to account for functional outcomes.
5. Outcomes will help a physician hone in on his areas of expertise while being aware of areas where he/she may not excel.
6. Although physicians have an ethical obligation to report their results, the obligation is honored mostly in the breach with the ethics manual outlining a physician's responsibility to "forthrightly help patients make informed choices among all appropriate care options."
7. Ethically speaking, a physician should always recommend a patient to the best-skilled physician. However, a physician has no way of knowing his/her own capabilities in certain treatments as opposed to other physicians if the data is not reported.
8. No physician can determine an outcome for a patient, but he or she can make the most educated decision on how to proceed if outcomes were reported more diligently and were readily available.
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