Opinion: To improve safety, hospitals should make ‘radical transparency’ real — and accessible

STAT May 20, 2022
Michael L. Millenson and J. Matthew Austin

Covid-19 may be receding, but it’s leaving a quiet menace lurking in hospitals in its wake.

In a Perspective essay in The New England Journal of Medicine, four senior physicians with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of a “severe” post-Covid decline in patient safety. The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology reached a similar conclusion, warning of a rise in “common, often-deadly” infections.

To help reverse this troubling trend, the federal physician leaders called for “promoting radical transparency.” Though they didn’t detail what that should entail, our years working in safety and quality strongly suggest that “radical transparency” must be radically different from current efforts in both...

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