Kaiser Health News reports a Kaiser Health News and USA Today Network investigation found that surgery centers “operate under such an uneven mix of rules across U.S. states that fatalities or serious injuries can result in no warning to government officials, much less to potential patients.” The piece says “the gaps in oversight enable centers hit with federal regulators’ toughest sanctions to keep operating,” and adds that “no rule stops a doctor exiled by a hospital for misconduct from opening a surgery center down the street.” The article also says the investigation “raises questions about the need for more robust oversight of surgery centers, where public access to important information, such as surgical outcome data, tends to be more limited than what’s available about hospitals. The gap persists even as the nation’s 5,600 surgery centers have surpassed hospitals in number and taken on increasingly complex procedures.”

From the news release of the American Association for Justice.