IMO criticises surgeon data plan as medicine 'does not lend itself to direct league tables' 

In Britain, the performance data for thousands of surgeons is released by the NHS via an official website where people can check details such as mortality and success rates for individual consultants. Picture: iStock

Children’s Health Ireland (CHI)’s plan to reveal surgeon-specific outcome data to show how good they are has been described as “simplistic” by the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO).

The IMO says that, if it goes ahead, it could end up leading to “perverse incentives” for surgeons to perform better.

The chair of the IMO consultants committee, Matthew Sadlier, also warned it could lead to poorer outcomes for patients.

"Medicine is not football, and thus does not lend itself to direct 'league tables' and simplistic performance metrics,” he said.

Prof Sadlier was speaking in reaction to an interview CHI’s new chief executive gave in which she said the measure was important to restore trust in the crisis-hit hospitals group.

Lucy Nugent said the public will also have to be “educated” about how to analyse the data so they can interpret it “appropriately”.

The move will, she said, be introduced in a number of years, and  it follows a system already operating around the world. For example, in Britain, the National Health Service (NHS) has had a service running since 2014.

In Britain, the performance data for thousands of surgeons is released by the NHS via an official website where people can check details such as mortality and success rates for individual consultants.

Rebuilding public trust

Ms Nugent announced the move as part of a raft of measures she wants brought in to rebuild the public's trust in the health group, which runs children's hospitals in Dublin at Crumlin, Temple St, and Tallaght.

Last year saw the group mired in controversies over failures in care, including the use of unapproved springs in spinal surgery.

Prof Sadlier told the Irish Examiner: “In order to assess outcomes, we would need adequate capture of outcome data which currently is not available.

Consultants should have their practices audited against international standards

“Those that are not meeting adequate standards should be given opportunities to meet what is required.

"Direct comparisons of invalid metrics could lead to perverse incentives and poor patient outcomes, and focus should be on teams, not individuals, as consultants work in teams."

The system Ms Nugent wants to introduce is similar to a "care compare" website run in America by the country's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

This allows people to assess surgeons based on their publicly available performance records, letting them look at reported experiences of their patients.

Germany has similar systems, including one where patients are even able to rate a surgeon's friendliness.

Ms Nugent, who took on the chief executive role just over a year ago, said in an interview with RTÉ's Today with David McCullagh that she wanted “any member of the public” to be able to see how CHI does in terms of outcomes.

“We need to rebuild public trust in us, and that's one way of doing it,” she said.