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Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

psychnewsdaily.com

1–10 of 222 posts

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#3
> The researchers emphasized that this study focused on common procedures, and on older Medicare patients. This means that the findings may not apply to other types of patients, or to other surgical procedures.

Is there any reason Medicare would play a role in the surgeon's performance?

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#4
post #2

So they went to fish for correlations and found this? EDA at its best...

I feel like we need an opposite saying for sentiments like this to the age old "correlation does not equal causation", something like "correlation does not mean automatically dismiss"

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#5
> Research on judges has yielded similar results. It has found, for example, that external factors as diverse as outdoor temperatures and sports results can influence judges’ decisions.

When I hear of these funky effects I always wonder how they relate to AI. Presumably this is somehow related to some kind of lossy compression of the state of the world, maybe similar to principal components[0]? Where the "I feel grumpy" component is a mix of defendant-is-guilty, temperature-is-low and my-team-lost.

It might also be related to the binding problem[1]?

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_component_analysis

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_problem

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#6

> The researchers emphasized that this study focused on common procedures, and on older Medicare patients. This means that the findings may not apply to other types of patients, or to other surgical procedures. Is there any reason Medicare would play a role in the surgeon's performance?

Medicare patients are all either 65 or older or suffering from a specific covered chronic disease.

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#9

> The researchers emphasized that this study focused on common procedures, and on older Medicare patients. This means that the findings may not apply to other types of patients, or to other surgical procedures. Is there any reason Medicare would play a role in the surgeon's performance?

Well, it doesn't pay well.

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#10

> The researchers emphasized that this study focused on common procedures, and on older Medicare patients. This means that the findings may not apply to other types of patients, or to other surgical procedures. Is there any reason Medicare would play a role in the surgeon's performance?

Many practices refuse to take Medicare patients.

It's less pay, more paperwork.

Sucks if you're on Medicare. You're stuck with the doctors that do accept it, which probably weeds out some of the better practices.

Healthcare and getting old suck in the US. Think about how this might affect, say, your parents. And eventually you.

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