Experts disagree about usefulness of hospital mortality data

Do hospital mortality ratios give patients meaningful data about their treatment centre, or are they over-simplistic and misleading? This question was the subject of a heated debate at the Risky Business conference on 11 September between Nick Black, professor of health services research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Roger Taylor, director of research and public affairs at the health analytics company Dr Foster.

Taylor, a cofounder of Dr Foster, defended hospital standardised mortality ratios (HSMRs) as being “incredibly useful …