The NHS is publishing survival rates for four common surgical procedures for each hospital trust in England as part of efforts to provide information for patients when they are choosing where they want to be treated, it was announced this week.

The figures for elective and emergency abdominal aortic aneurysms, hip replacements, and knee replacements have been posted on the NHS Choices website (www.nhs.uk).

The data are published as part of a “hospital scorecard,” which will allow patients to compare different hospitals for a range of clinical and non-clinical measures, such as survival, length of hospital stay, and rates of meticillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

For example, for hip replacements data are given for survival rate (compared with that expected for the types …