Health security

Our Rebuttal to RAND’s Critique of Surgeon Scorecard

A few days ago, the RAND Corporation published an opinion piece that raised questions about Surgeon Scorecard, our searchable online database of complication rates for surgeons performing several elective operations. We appreciate the authors’ intentions and plan to take some suggestions into account as we prepare Surgeon Scorecard 2.0.

We do, however, disagree with much of what is argued in the RAND essay. As we will detail below, the authors omit mention of key aspects of our methodology and mischaracterize others.  Several of the most significant purported shortcomings involve hypothetical events that “might be” true or are “likely.”