It doesn't work like that in the medical profession, MD's in general don't have the professional mobility of programmers, nowhere in the world, and surgeons hav

It doesn't work like that in the medical profession, MD's in general don't have the professional mobility of programmers, nowhere in the world, and surgeons have even less such mobility. You can have very skilled guys at "provincial" hospitals, either because they are stuck there or because the small town hospital actually gives them special incentives to stay there. It's less likely, but the probabilities have a very odd distribution varying from country to country so it's nothing near as easy to reason about as programmers. And at a university hospital, your life can end up in the hands of a very very smart surgeon-researcher with tens of published papers that may have revolutionized the entire field he works in and got him very highly ranked, but that super-surgeon-researcher might actually have quite poor surgical practical skills (think dexterity/speed) and although you may get a lower chance of complications in the end, you will mostly get it because of a better hospital with better post op care. DON'T compare healthcare with programming, or even with other "normal" professions where you can easily rank professionals... everything is complicated and "opaque" and medical professionals make as much as possibles to prop each other and "leak" as little information as possible to the patients and general population. Also, in surgery "a better surgeon" != "a smarter surgeon" != "a better educated surgeon". It's a complicated function of "natural talent", "capacity for performance under heavy workload", "motivation", experience, education and IQ (and unlike programming, here the last two factors tend to be least important imho, at least if they are above a certain threshold).