“An overwhelming majority of cardiologists in New York say that, in certain circumstances, they do not operate on patients who might benefit from heart surgery, because they are worried about hurting their rankings on physician scorecards issued by the state.”8 Fully 83 percent of respondents said that the reporting of mortality rates had this effect, and 79 percent admitted that “the knowledge that mortality statistics would be made public” had affected their own decisions about whether to perform surgery.
