California Publishes Every Heart Surgeon's Mortality Rate — Here's How to Read It

By Trusted Surgeon Team —

If you are facing heart bypass surgery in California, you can look up your surgeon's risk-adjusted mortality rate — by name, for free. California's CABG Outcomes Reporting Program (CCORP), run by the state's Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI), has published surgeon-level results for coronary artery bypass surgery since reporting was mandated in 2003. The data lives at hcai.ca.gov and on the California Health and Human Services Open Data Portal. Most patients — and most doctors' families — have never opened it. This guide explains what it measures, what "risk-adjusted" actually means, and how to read a surgeon's report card without a statistics degree.

What is CCORP?

CCORP — the California CABG Outcomes Reporting Program — is a state program that collects clinical data on every isolated coronary artery bypass surgery performed at California-licensed hospitals and reports outcomes publicly, by hospital and by named surgeon. California is one of a very small number of states (New York and New Jersey are the notable others) that publish surgeon-level cardiac outcomes at all. That makes this dataset the single most important public resource for anyone choosing a bypass surgeon in California.

The reports rate performance on risk-adjusted operative mortality for isolated CABG, operative mortality for CABG combined with valve surgery, post-operative stroke, and 30-day readmission.

What does "risk-adjusted" mean in plain English?

Raw death rates are misleading, because they punish surgeons who take the hardest cases. A surgeon who operates on frail 85-year-olds with diabetes and prior heart attacks will lose more patients than one who operates on otherwise-healthy 60-year-olds — even if the first surgeon is technically superior.

Risk adjustment corrects for this. The state's statistical model looks at each surgeon's actual patient mix — age, heart function, kidney disease, urgency of the operation, and dozens of other clinical factors — and calculates the mortality rate you would expect for those specific patients. The published number compares what actually happened against that expectation. A surgeon is flagged "better than expected" or "worse than expected" only when the difference is too large to be plausibly explained by chance.

That is the number worth reading: not "how many patients died," but "how did real results compare with what this surgeon's case mix predicted."

What do the ratings actually look like?

Each reported surgeon gets, in essence, three columns: the number of isolated CABG surgeries performed in the reporting period, the risk-adjusted operative mortality rate, and a performance category — better than expected, as expected, or worse than expected, relative to the statewide rate. The large middle group is rated "as expected"; statistical outliers in either direction are flagged.

For context: the statewide isolated-CABG operative mortality rate was 2.0% in the 2023 report — down from 2.5% in 2022, and roughly 30% lower than when mandated reporting began in 2003. Public reporting and declining mortality have moved together in California for two decades.

Two reading rules we apply as analysts:

  1. Check the case count before the rate. A surgeon with 12 cases and zero deaths is not "better" than one with 250 cases and a 1.8% rate — small samples are statistically silent. This matters doubly because the research literature associates higher CABG volume with lower mortality: in New York's registry of 57,150 bypass operations, surgeons performing 125+ per year at high-volume hospitals had risk-adjusted mortality of 1.89% versus 2.67% otherwise (Hannan et al., Circulation 2003), and a national study identified minimum surgeon and hospital volume thresholds below which mortality and hospital stays were higher (Chou et al., PLOS ONE 2021).
  2. Treat "as expected" as the honest middle, not a warning. Most competent surgeons live there. The flags to weigh seriously are "worse than expected" — and the strongest signal is consistency across multiple reporting cycles, not a single period.

What are the limits of the CCORP data?

Honest ones. The data typically lags one to two years behind today, because collection, auditing, and risk-adjustment take time. It covers isolated CABG (and CABG + valve) — not stents, not other heart operations. And mortality is not the whole story: volume and mortality statistics are associated with quality but imperfectly — studies of the national cardiac-surgery database found higher-volume programs had modestly lower mortality, while cautioning that volume alone does not identify every strong or weak performer (Peterson et al., JAMA 2004; Shahian et al., JTCVS 2010).

That is exactly why we treat CCORP as one input among many. A complete picture adds credentials and board records, hospital performance, clinical publications, litigation and disciplinary history, and payment disclosures — synthesized case by case.

How do I actually look up a California heart surgeon?

  1. Go to HCAI's CABG outcomes reports page or the CHHS open data portal.
  2. Open the most recent surgeon-level report and find your surgeon by name.
  3. Note the case count, the risk-adjusted mortality rate, and the performance category — and check one or two earlier reporting cycles for consistency.
  4. Cross-check the license record at the Medical Board of California.
  5. Bring the numbers to your consultation and ask the surgeon to walk you through them. Good surgeons know their data.

FAQ

Does a "worse than expected" rating mean I should refuse a surgeon? Not automatically — it means you should ask about it directly and weigh the answer alongside volume, consistency across reporting periods, and the hospital's own rating. It is a flag for a conversation, not a verdict.

Why can't I find my surgeon in the report? Surgeons appear when they performed isolated CABG at a California-licensed hospital in the reporting window. Very low case counts, recent relocation to California, or a practice focused on other cardiac procedures can all explain an absence.

How current is the data? Reports typically reflect surgeries performed one to two years before publication. We flag this lag openly in every analysis we deliver.

Does any of this apply to hip replacement? Not through CCORP — California's surgeon-level public reporting covers CABG. For hip surgery, volume and outcome signals come from other public sources; our surgeon volume evidence review covers that literature.

Trusted Surgeon provides informational summaries and data analysis to support your decision-making. We do not diagnose medical conditions, recommend treatments, or provide medical care. Always consult board-certified physicians regarding your care.

Facing a bypass decision in California? We read CCORP — and every other public record — for you, and deliver a shortlist of three named surgeons with the evidence for each, within 24 hours. Get Your Curated Surgeon Shortlist · See How We Evaluate Surgeons

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