The Best Practice: How the New Quality Movement is Transforming Medicine by Charles C. Kenney

From the Publisher

Americans have always thought their healthcare system was the best in the world. But starting in the late 1990s, shocking reports emerged that showed this was far from the truth. Treatment-related deaths or “complications” were found to be the fifth leading cause of death for Americans, and hundreds of thousands of patients were being harmed by botched medical procedures.

Spurred by the quality crisis, a group of visionary physicians led by Donald Berwick and Paul Batalden embarked on a study of industrial “quality improvement” techniques, daring to apply them to the practice of medicine despite resistance from the medical community. The Best Practice tells the story of this burgeoning movement, and of how the medical landscape is being radically transformed—for the better.

Kirkus Reviews

A cheerleading look at how some healthcare professionals are trying to improve quality by changing the way doctors and hospitals handle patients. An alarmingly high number of people die because of medical error each year, writes Kenney (Rescue Men, 2007, etc.), but a group of reformers are trying to change that. The author focuses on what is known as the "new quality movement," which examines hospital systems, examining everything from the way waiting rooms are laid out to the simple but often fatal errors doctors and nurses make in overadministering medicine. Kenney spends a lot of time with the bureaucrats he considers visionaries, who are working to shore up the system. A lot of what they try to implement-doing away with top-down management, rigorous attention to detail-comes from other sectors of the economy, such as Japanese automotive industries; the appeal of the book broadens at these points to engage readers interested in issues other than healthcare. In general, however, reading about hospital policies and procedures is as tedious as it sounds. The text acquires emotional weight when Kenney profiles patients who have suffered tragedies due to medical error and families forced to deal with senseless deaths that could have been avoided. But the author, who works as a consultant for Blue Cross Blue Shield, too often puts aside his journalistic skepticism in favor of unadulterated cheerleading for the new quality cause. At those times, the book reads like a slick sales job that overwhelms the reader with "evidence" but leaves critical questions unanswered. The issue most egregiously brushed aside is the question of how political forces prop up an obviously inadequate healthcareindustry. Strictly for the already converted. Agent: Rebecca Friedman/Sterling Lord Literistic

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Table of Contents