Erasmus University hospital said on Thursday it will not comply with new legislation requiring it to publish death rates on its website.

The new rules come into effect on March 1 but the Erasmus MC has ‘objections’ to publication in principle, officials said on Thursday.

Erasmus believes publication will not allow for the fair comparison of death rates in different hospitals because they do not take the difference in patients into account.

For example, patients with heart failure are often transferred from ordinary hospitals to teaching hospitals and are more likely to die, chief medical information officer Jan Hazelzet told the NRC. ‘But that says nothing about the quality of our care,’ he told the paper.

Health minister Edith Schippers said last June that hospitals would have to start publishing their death rates for different treatments. This will make the quality of care more transparent for patients, she said.