Why Cleveland Clinic shares its outcomes data with the world

Cleveland Clinic has a long history of measuring and reporting data on health outcomes, most famously in our Outcomes Books, the yearly reports on how patients treated in our different departments fare. We've realized that you cannot improve something if you don't measure it and share what you find — so in that vein, I'd like to share some of our experiences in building this system at Cleveland Clinic. We began tracking clinical outcomes for cardiac patients in 1979, and have been using such data to facilitate accountability and learning since 1989. In 1998, we began publishing and distributing that data to referring physicians.