Are Good Doctors Bad for Your Health?

“Get me the best cardiologist” is our natural response to any heart problem. Unfortunately, it is probably wrong. Surprisingly, the right question is almost its exact opposite: At which hospital are all the famous, senior cardiologists away?

One of the more surprising — and genuinely scary — research papers published recently appeared in JAMA Internal Medicine. It examined 10 years of data involving tens of thousands of hospital admissions. It found that patients with acute, life-threatening cardiac conditions didbetter when the senior cardiologists were out of town. And this was at the best hospitals in the United States, our academic teaching hospitals.