Limits placed on low-volume providers and hospitals

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and the University of Michigan all plan to implement minimum volume standards on 10 procedures that are proven to be riskier when performed infrequently. The move comes after a report released by U.S. News & World Report which found hospitals that do small numbers of these procedures place patients at greater risk than hospitals that have a high volume of these procedures. Among the procedures on the list: bariatric surgery, lung cancer surgery, esophagus surgery, and joint replacement.

“Low-volume hobbyists are bad for patients and we have to stop them,” says Dr. John Birkmeyer, a surgeon and chief academic officer at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Birkmeyer helped to draft the new standards with Dr. Peter Pronovost, director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins University, in consultation with surgeons at both institutions.

Source: U.S. News & World Report