AllAfrica.com reports on legislation driving health transparency. Click through for an interesting take on health care transparency through another country's eyes.

South Africa: New Legislation On Medicines to Save Consumers 20 Percent.

Ron Winslow on the WSJ Health Blog posts insight on a recent JAHA study of preventable deaths resulting from cardiac bypass surgery. The study finds that 32% of CABG mortalities were preventable.

An interesting note from the article is that "Typical report cards do not provide the necessary detail to direct surgeons where to focus their quality improvement efforts."

Of perhaps even more interest is some follow-up Ron got from one of the co-authors:

As reported today in iHealthBeat, the National Health Service in the UK unveiled its new Web site that aims to personalize health care and provide hospital comparisons so consumers make more informed decisions.

The NHS Choices Web site (www.nhs.co.uk) provides the public with access to a library of information on common conditions and procedures that previously only was available to providers; a hospital comparison tool of the most common procedures, readmission rates and wait and length-of-stay times that will enable patients to be more selective about where they go for treatment; and provider profiles.

Rates of survival at the U.K.'s 16 specialist heart centers are now posted online. As reported on BBC News Web site, the data includes the number and range of procedures each hospital conducts and the survival rates for the most common surgeries. It includes the number and range of procedures each does and survival rates for the most common surgeries. However, the figures do not rate individual surgeons. The figures are also not adjusted for risk, which means other factors, such as the age or sex of the child or a particularly complex case, might skew the data. The NHS' Information Centre (IC), which runs the new website (www.ccad.org.uk/congenital), argues that data on individual surgeons would be misleading as treatment is delivered by a team rather than by an individual. The site also includes national averages for comparison and any hospitals that appear to be failing can be flagged to the appropriate authorities, the IC added.