Health care quality, and sharks

Link health care with employers' pacts

Revealing the cost of care at Long Island hospitals is a good first step in promoting more consumerism ["Comparing cost of hospital treatment online," News, July 24]. But we still have a long way to go since the quality of care at both the hospital and physician levels needs to be considered. Medicare.gov does provide information on hospitals and has a star rating system that can be useful as a guide to quality, but when it comes to physicians, something that patients really care about, we mostly depend on anecdotal data from various websites. As the article rightly points out, consumers have little incentive to shop for care based on price, but employers do. With the cost of providing health care coverage for employees outpacing inflation, employers need to seek better value for their expenditures. Direct contracting between health care systems and employers can unlock quality data that is needed to create the value that employers and employees will seek.

John Sardelis, Great Neck

The writer is a fellow at the New York Academy of Medicine.

Fishermen aren't ones luring sharks near shore

A reader wrote that fishermen surfcasting from the beach is a cause of the uptick of shark sightings and attacks at South Shore beaches ["Fish far from us to keep sharks away," Letters, July 24]. That’s not true. To suggest that a few fishermen are to blame is ludicrous. If you saw a video of a shark chasing a school of bunker, the cause is obvious.

The increase in baitfish in the waters close to shore shows that our conservation efforts are paying off ["More sharks a good sign," News, July 26]. The inshore water is getting cleaner every year. That has led to the increase of baitfish. That, in turn, leads to the increase in predator fish.  A few fishermen hooking up a piece of bait and casting it is not enough to cause the “problem.” The cleaner ocean is a blessing. Never forget —  it’s their ocean, and they just let us play in it.

Rick Russo, Hicksville