Worlds “best” hospital

It was a busy week and I could not put pen down to paper for few days 😦 Got few minutes before I start my endoscopy list…so i thought why not write something!!

I often come across this notion of ” Worlds best hospitals”. I think as a practicing surgeon and a doctor who has been in this business for decades i feel its time i put my thoughts down too:)

Often these claims are made by ” lay media” , not by professional medical journals. And that itself is a red flag for me…..healthcare nowadays is a complex metric to measure , even for professionals specialising in this field….how can lay journlists get it right ? I feel it is a tall ask of them.

Secondly, more often than not , these lay journals do not give any specific criteria that they used to arrive at the conclusions …there is no objective evaluations that they used to judge various institutions……they arrive at their conclusions by some “vodoo magic” and they expect us to believe their “conclusions” as “Gospel truth”!!

In any reputed medical journal any article is accompanied by a decleration of conflict of interest and financial disclosure…..it does not come as a huge surprise to me that almost all of these ” worlds best hospital” guides conveniently ignore this bit 😉

Oddly enough I often see that these ” world best hospital” guides are heavily biased towards west or east asia…..some of the fantastic hospitals in south asia are specifically ignored 🙂 No surprises there i would say !!!

I, for one , have worked in some of the east asian ” worlds Nth best hospitals” prior and work currently in the west, I have worked in some very high volume centres in south asia too ….I can safetly say that my experience in some of the ” words Nth best hospitals” advertised is far far from ground reality!! There are regional hospitals in the far east even , that , in my opinion, perform far better than the , so called ” worlds Nth best hospital” advertised in these bogus media pages!! Perhaps they dont pay enough 😉

I often notice that trainees from so called ” Worlds Nth best hospital ” often come to the west to complete felloswships! Sometimes to ” lesser” hospitals than their ” perstigeous institutions”….if the assesments are correct it should be Vice versa is it not ?

So in conclusion….Do not go by these bogus media articles on ” Worlds Nth best hospital”

If in doubt , ask an expert , or look at the statistics yourself……You cannot have the world best colorectal surgeons in a hospital that does not even do 100 colectomies per year or worlds best liver transplant surgeon in a place where you would be lucky to get 1 transplant a month 🙂 Afterall if you need a mechanic to fix your car you will go to the highest volume most experienced mechanic wont you ? Not who advertises he is the best but doesnot do one car per month 🙂

Tc and catch you soon!

LBS