A recent article in Newsweek entitled “Which Hospital is the Best?”, Dr. Brian Jarman points out that as “health care becomes more a global enterprise, with patients going farther afield in pursuit of the best care, the need for an objective measure of hospital performance has become more pressing.” How far will this expand? I really can’t make any predictions but its just fascinating to think that perhaps that people would go to the best facility to get treatment regardless of location. Of course this possibility is most likely a really long ways off for the average person, it is still none the less a possibility in the future of globalization.
The article also discusses that in the U.S. “more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals participated in a campaign of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Boston to reduce mortality rates.” Hospitals and doctors have never been in favor of sharing hospitals mortality data but there has been a wave of hospitals willing to share this information with patients, even publishing it online.
With standards being set and hospitals beginning to willingly to share once hidden data will this increase competition between hospitals? Not that there hasn’t been in the past, but will this intensify competition to provide the best healthcare?
Loaded Learning 
I really liked the artical you posted. Relizing that this is a slightlly different situation, I think that it’s worth noting that when buissinesses first began to be required to publish data on the amount of pollution that that they emmitted it caused a sharp decrease in factory emmissions due to negative publicity. I don’t think that in the long run their was a huge impact on compitition but that it mearlly secceeded in setting the bar high enstead of low.
Hi,
I found your blog via google by accident and have to admit that youve a really interesting blog 🙂
Just saved your feed in my reader, have a nice day 🙂