Lancet
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The English National Health Service published outcome information for individual surgeons for ten specialties in June, 2013. We looked at whether individual surgeons do sufficient numbers of procedures to be able to reliably identify those with poor performance. ⋯ Therefore, public reporting of individual surgeons' outcomes could lead to false complacency. We recommend use of outcomes that are fairly frequent, considering the hospital as the unit of reporting when numbers are low, and avoiding interpretation of no evidence of poor performance as evidence of acceptable performance.