Health Report

In Australia, the UK and the US schemes are being implemented to track the outcomes of surgeons — that is, following up with the people surgeons operate on to see whether they experience complications.

The idea is that measuring these outcomes can help us see the strengths and weaknesses between hospitals, and improve in areas where we aren't up to scratch.

But not everyone's a fan. Some surgeons argue such schemes will encourage doctors to avoid risky patients or 'game the system' by tweaking how their patient data is entered into the system.

Then there's the question of how widely the data should be shared. Should it be just surgeons who get to see how well they perform and compare, or do patients have a right to know too?

Australia is notorious for being the home of a huge number of the world's most venomous animals — funnelweb spiders, box jellyfish and brown snakes among them.

Epidemics of parechovirus are concerning doctors, especially because of the harm the virus can cause children. There's no vaccine, so how do we tackle it? Plus, eye specialists take aim at Irlen syndrome, a proposed condition to explain why some children have reading difficulties — new data on when cancers are being diagnosed in Australia — and the next steps in getting pneumonia vaccines to people across the world.

Australia has the highest rate of knee reconstructions in the world — what's going on, and how do we stop it? Plus, how weight loss can help with diabetes remission, the impact diabetes has on surgical outcomes, and the factors that play into higher rates of psychological distress among Aboriginal Australians.