How Can Patients Determine Reliable Orthopedic Care?

Purpose: The current healthcare system does not afford patients sufficient transparency in order to make informed decisions regarding their orthopedic care. The reason for this is that outcomes reporting is neither standardized nor thorough. Moreover, US News and World Report (USNWR), the agency which ranks best orthopedic programs, uses metrics that do not represent outcomes most important to patients. The purpose of this study was to determine how the best orthopedic programs use outcome measurement and transparently report those outcomes.

Methods: We surveyed the top 30 USNWR ranked orthopedic programs in order to identify what metrics for outcome they were using and reporting as available to patients. Our search included review of Dept. websites, annual reports and search engines.

Results: Only a minority (17 of 30) of the top 20 USNWR ranked orthopedic programs reported any basic outcomes data on common measures such as surgical site infection rate, reoperation rate and readmissions. And less than 30% disclosed patient reported outcomes (PROMs) for any orthopedic procedure.

Conclusion: The current status quo of transparency for outcomes of orthopedic surgical procedures is poor and remains insufficient for patients to make informed decisions as to their care for a given orthopedic condition.