[spaetzleesser]

" At least I felt it hard to admit that the costly procedure had failed and saying it to my surgeon didn't feel easy."

That's one thing I have noticed. A few years ago my girlfriend had a failed surgery. She complained constantly during the weeks before the followup meeting. In the followup meeting the surgeon talked about how well the surgery had gone. My girlfriend basically agreed and they bantered around for almost half an hour. Ten minutes before the appointment ended I lost patience and said "Hold on, guys. This thing hasn't worked at all. The pain is worse than before and she talks at home about killing herself. How do we get out of this?". The surgeon gave me the evil eye, my girlfriend said nothing and we basically got kicked out soon.

It was a really weird dynamic. I wonder how many surgeries are scored as success because patients are afraid of telling the surgeon that it wasn't. I think it may be a substantial percentage where the hospital/surgeon never hears about problems and there is no independent follow up either.

[nickff]

Hospitals don't even track revision rates (the proportion of the time where a second surgery is required to 'fix' issues from the first), largely because some surgeons cause many problems, and don't want to see the numbers. It's a tragic state of affairs that leads to a great deal of suffering, and I am very pessimistic about the probability of meaningful reform.

[jdmcnugent]

They certainly do track it because Medicare will not pay for a second hospital stay in many cases.

https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Ass...

Beware of unintended consequences though, hospitals are less inclined to permit riskier surgeries on unhealthy patients if they think the risk of readmissions is too high. Good luck getting your knee replacement if you are a 300lb diabetic smoker.