Customer Reviews

From Chaos To Care: The Promise Of Team-based Medicine

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This is an excellent book on the state of the healthcare system and provides significant recommendations to enhance the results of patient care. The author referring to medicine states, "It conducts its business with systems so archaic and incentives so perverse that the nation's education system looks almost rational by comparison." Doctor Lawrence has a well structured approach to address the issues based on collaboration of the medical, nursing team, allied healthcare workers, administrative personnel, and tools to back them up. Something most would have thought would have been in place, but to those you know healthcare is seldom available. It is said, "many hands make for a light load" like wise, "many minds make good patient care."

The author eloquently describes problems faced by patients seeking care in the current environment. It is a snapshot of the quality movement in healthcare. Like a work of art, what is also interesting is what is not there or the negative spaces. A very wise man once said 'if you can't measure it you can't control it'. The word measurement is sadly missing from the index and table of contents. Measurement is central to quality improvement. Clinical laboratories have been required to measure, analyze and track the quality of their work for over 30 years. Many clinical labs have used statistical process control charts, control materials, standards etc. for decades. However, they have not routinely sought to identify root causes and corrective actions. Perhaps there will be a sequel with numerous valid measures of healthcare quality, more detailed examples of six sigma and possibly other lessons from Deming and Juran.