ProPublica has published a searchable scorecard to help patients choose a surgeon. It includes the complication rates of roughly 17,000 surgeons at 3600 hospitals across the country.

Using Medicare data for inpatient stays from 2009 to 2013, they focused on eight common elective surgeries (e.g., knee or hip replacement, angioplasty, gall bladder removal, prostate removal). They calculated the 30-day readmission rate for surgery-related complications, such as infections, blood clots, uncontrolled bleeding, and misaligned orthopedic devices and adjusted for factors including patient health and age, among other things.

Overall complication rates were 2% to 4%. Roughly 11% of surgeons were responsible for about a quarter of the complications.

The scorecard is searchable by surgeon, hospital, city, and state.

Surgeon Scorecard