Performance data and informed consent: a duty to disclose?

Hospitals, colleges and other institutions increasingly collect, analyse and disseminate data relating to the performance of individual health practitioners, particularly those undertaking surgical procedures. Arguments have long been made for an ethical duty to disclose information regarding a practitioner’s experience or skill to patients as part of the process of informed consent (Box 1).1 Significantly, recent developments suggest that practitioners may, in some circumstances, have a legal duty to disclose their performance data to patients (Box 2).