What outcome numbers cannot tell you
Published success rates are usually uncheckable. Here is what makes a number meaningful and what makes it decoration.
Success percentages are the most common figure in medical tourism marketing and the least useful. The problem is not honesty; it is that the number is unaccompanied.
What a usable figure carries
A value, the instrument it was measured with, the sample it came from, and the date. Remove any one of those and the figure cannot be checked, compared or reproduced.
"Ninety per cent of our patients improve" carries none of them. It does not say improve on what, measured how, among whom, or when.
Selection decides the number
A centre that admits mainly younger patients early after a first stroke will report better averages than one admitting complex, long-standing cases — with identical quality of care.
Without knowing who was counted, a comparison between two centres’ averages compares their admission policies rather than their treatment.
What to ask for instead
Your own admission and discharge scores on named instruments. That is a figure about you, produced under known conditions, and readable by a clinician who was not there.
It is a smaller claim than a success rate, and it is the only one that concerns your case.
Topic
More in Measurement and outcomes
- Which measurement instruments are used, and why thoseValidated scales for independence, balance, walking, tone and cognition — chosen by diagnosis rather than applied uniformly.
- How to read the measurements in a discharge documentTwo scores, the same instrument, the same rules — and what a difference between them does and does not prove.
