Surgeons refuse to operate to keep their personal statistics clean.

the verdict

REFUTED

the evidence says no

Recorded sources

0 sources for · 2 against

Counts group repeated records of the same source within each side. They do not measure evidence strength or source independence.

Empirical studies evaluating the impact of public surgeon report cards and outcome tracking have found no evidence that surgeons refuse to operate or become risk-averse to protect their personal statistics.

The analysis

The claim posits that surgeons refuse to operate to keep their statistics clean (a form of risk aversion prompted by performance tracking). While some opinion and commentary pieces raise concerns about potential risk aversion or defensive medicine, empirical population-level studies explicitly examining this question in specialties like vascular surgery and colorectal surgery found that patient selection and treatment rates did not drop following the public reporting of surgeon outcomes. Therefore, the direct evidence refutes the claim.

Evidence against · 2

Reporting individual surgeon outcomes does not lead to risk aversion in abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery.

Recorded source metadata

A Saratzis, A Thatcher, M F Bath, D A Sidloff, M J Bown, J Shakespeare, R D Sayers, C Imray. Reporting individual surgeon outcomes does not lead to risk aversion in abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery.. 2017. https://doi.org/10.1308/rcsann.2017.0005

This study investigated whether reporting individual surgeon outcomes for aneurysm surgery leads to risk aversion and found no evidence that surgeons became risk-averse in their patient selection.

Source citation format

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More against · 1

Effect of public reporting of surgeons' outcomes on patient selection, "gaming," and mortality in colorectal cancer surgery in England: population based cohort study.

Recorded source metadata

Abigail E Vallance, Nicola S Fearnhead, Angela Kuryba, James Hill, Charles Maxwell-Armstrong, Michael Braun, Jan van der Meulen, Kate Walker. Effect of public reporting of surgeons' outcomes on patient selection, "gaming," and mortality in colorectal cancer surgery in England: population based cohort study.. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k1581

This large population-based cohort study found that the introduction of public outcome reporting for colorectal surgeons did not lead to risk-averse clinical practice or gaming of data.

Source citation format

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first checked31 Jul 2026

judged → REFUTED · 1031 Jul 2026

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