Another skirmish for transparency

The Washington Post published a blog post commenting on a defamation suit brought against CNN by Dr. Michael Black, a surgeon who worked at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, FL. The blog post highlights a number of interesting angles about this conflict. For one, the lawsuit touches on why statistics such as mortality rates can be difficult to determine: even figuring out what should be included in the denominator can be tricky. The numerator itself is not straightforward, since the number of adverse events may be risk-adjusted for the complexity of the cases.

What's particularly interesting to me is that both the hospital and the surgeon have pointed out inaccuracies in CNN's methodology, but apparently have not furnished data themselves. If a surgeon truly thought that his record was stellar, I'd imagine that he would actually be eager to share his data. Instead, the hospital and doctor seemed to have only criticized CNN's efforts without indicating what the actual numbers should be. I suspect that over time, the position maintained by the hospital and doctor will not be viewed favorably by patients.