Youth vs. experience: Who wins in medicine?
Harvard researchers who recently wrote an essay analyzed data from Medicare to draw conclusions about hospitalists and surgeons who treat hospital in-patients for non-elective admissions. The researchers grouped the physicians by age to determine which groups performed better. The yardstick by which they were measured was mortality within 30 days of admission. The sample size was significant—over 700,000 Medicare patients, all over 65 years of age. What they found were …