Public reporting of hospital outcomes: a challenging road ahead.

Public reporting of patient outcomes following hospitalisation in Australia is limited compared with other countries. This will change, given recent commitments by state and federal governments to an Australian reporting program as part of health reform. There are numerous challenges in the design and implementation of such a program, including strategic decisions, statistical methods, and preventing risk aversion and perverse behaviour. Experience in other countries is likely to provide valuable lessons and tools for Australia as it seeks to build its reporting capacity.