"Geography is destiny in health care," says Dartmouth's Jack Wennberg.
It's seen again in two studies in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.
The studies show general improvement among U.S. hospitals in improving their quality of the care, but that too many even top performers fail too often to offer the right treatments following clearly established evidence.
The Washington Post quotes Harvard's medical quality expert Lucian Leape: "What's going on here? These are treatments that are no-brainers. These are the easy things," said Leape. "We're really looking at patients for whom 100 percent should be receiving these treatments. So why isn't it 100 percent?"
Posted by schwitz at July 21, 2005 08:33 AM | TrackBack