What’s more important  to patient outcomes and service excellence – the performance of a hospital or its affiliated physicians? Tray Dunaway, MD, author, surgeon and educator, believes the more important question may be, can you see who’s been swimming naked?  We invited Dr. Dunaway to shed some light on the topic in the week leading up to the 2012 HealthShare Symposium, where he will expand on what he believes the industry needs to do to advance healthcare quality for patients. For now, here’s a preview.

Want to improve hospital-physician alignment? Tell them you can see them naked.

And so can everyone else!

Tray Dunaway, MD

Choosing a physician and hospital based on superior health care value determined by clinical outcomes and service benchmarks is difficult for many reasons. Even well educated and savvy healthcare consumers face a daunting task, often compounded by an overwhelming sense of urgency, in making the best healthcare buying decision when suddenly faced with medical needs.

Making the right choice is difficult because healthcare quality waters are murky. Most consumers can’t comprehend a myriad of decision making factors, nor can they determine proper significance of factors they even think they may understand. But quoting Warren Buffett, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”