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The Best Practice: How the New Quality Movement is Transforming Medicine Hardcover – July 22, 2008

by Charles Kenney (Author)

17 customer reviews

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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.

The Best Practice: How the New Quality Movement is Transforming Medicine

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Product Details

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1 edition (July 22, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1586486195
ISBN-13: 978-1586486198
Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.8 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,256,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #507 in Books > Business & Money > Management & Leadership > Quality Control & Management > Total Quality Management
- #2305 in Books > Medical Books > Administration & Medicine Economics > Health Care Delivery

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Customer Reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars

5 star		65%
4 star		23%
3 star		6%
2 star		6%
1 star		0%

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Top Customer Reviews

Real, Measurable Quality in Health Care

By Bill Gossett on August 3, 2008

Format: Hardcover

This is my favorite example of a visionary solution since reading How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business by Hubbard. Kenney's work would have been a great example for Hubbard and Hubbard's methods would have solved many of the challenges of Donald Berwick and Paul Batalden, the heroes of The Best Practice.

Whether the average patient can tell it or not, the quality of health care is improving measurably thanks largely to a passionate devotion of Berwick and Batalden to their cause. The biggest surprise for me in the book is how even a culture as entrenched as medicine can start to change its ways when quality becomes a quantity that is measured and used as a yardstick for improvement. Champions of the quality control methods W.E. Demming developed for other businesses, Berwick and Batalden decide to implement standards of quality already known in other professions to perhaps the profession perhaps most resistant to objective measurement. And we are all better off for it.

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Uncritical review of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's version of health care quality improvement

By Kindle Customer on February 10, 2009

Format: Hardcover

Very readable, but greatly simplified overview of the health care quality improvement movement. Takes as its center the vision of Don Berwick's Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Unfortunately, while a central tenet of the quality movement is that depending upon heroic performance of individuals is a way to ensure error and mistake, the book takes a heroic approach to the movement itself painting the leading lights as paragons. Doesn't dig deep enough to offer an account of the inertia of healthcare and our nation's failures of cost and quality.

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THE BEST PRACTICE, but not the best book

By ja on September 17, 2012

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

Charles Kenney has assembled here a (generally) linear collection of anecdotes, medical personalities, and health care policy observations titled "Best Practice." Whether or not best practices are effectively elucidated within the book is debatable. There are included here several well worn and frequently cited examples of medical errors and patient tragedies that are not unfamiliar to readers of this genre. Also familiar are physicians and administrators currently highly visible in the national meetings, lay press, and medical literature serving as the fora to define the meaning of "value" for the United States medical system. The book, for those of you who are building your knowledge of the Quality Movement, breaks no new ground. Moving through the chapters from front to back, the book's lack of objective tone is initially distracting, and then annoying, and then downright aggravating. Kenney hasn't met a hyperbole he couldn't work into still another glowing sentence about one or the other of the "protagonists" or "exemplary" healthcare systems of the story. The verb and adjective choices are consistently fawning and effusive, and it quickly gets to the point that there's just way too much icing on mighty too little cake. The TRANSFORMING HEALTH CARE book about the Virginia Mason system is also written by Kenney, and you, like me, will readily recognize that fact before checking out just who the author is on the dust jacket, from the same compendium of excessive adjectives and overstated verbs. Buy a copy for your library for completeness sake, or if you are a politician auditioning writers to be your biographer.

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Charles Kenney Identifies What is Right in Our Healthcare System

By Amanda N. Chicoine on January 15, 2012

Format: Hardcover

The Best Practice by author and consultant Charles Kenney clearly shows us what many healthcare organizations in this country are doing right! There are a growing number of individuals who have made a commitment to see that patient care is not only safe but affordable and of the highest quality. He describes the project taken on by Dr. Donald Berwick and Blanton Godfrey where they sign on some of the leading hospitals in the country to put together teams that consisted of top physicians as well as hospital administrators. The goal was to select a problem, get to the root cause and then find a remedy. The main purpose: to determine if the tools that are used in other industries to achieve top performance could be used in our healthcare system and achieve similar results. The project was an overwhelming success and Kenney's description of the people involved and their dedication to discovering ways to accomplish their goals is both inspirational and moving.

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A good review of hospital "Best Practice" Issues

By Edward J. Shahady on September 4, 2008

Format: Hardcover

Book is well written and easy to read. Provides a history and description of the quality movement over the past few decades. The stories of the leaders like Don Berwin were very helpful to others who are trying to increase the quality of health care.

The book stresses issues in hospital quality that can be translated to the outpatient setting but would have been helpful to have more stories related to outpatient care.

Ed Shahady MD

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Interesting stuff and a good read

By Jessica E. Sims on September 23, 2008

Format: Hardcover

There is some very interesting information in there, things I really had no idea were happening (like studying Toyota to reduce medical errors). Considering I work on the other side of things, actually seeing patients, I feel like this work hits some important points, but perhaps not the most pressing and direct issues that impair providers from providing excellent care every time.

Jessica Sims
([...])

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Best Practice

By Ruth Grendell on September 19, 2008

Format: Hardcover

This is an excellent resource for health care providers in highlighting the many changes that can help revise the health care system and ensure a high quality of care.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Five Stars

Published 1 month ago by barbara mclemore

A Good Read in Healthcare

For doctor or patient understanding the movement for quality and safety in medicine is key to understanding the healthcare debate. Read more

Published 1 month ago by docoldman

Five Stars

A classic

Published 7 months ago by Chata

it is best to have read the literature

used this book professionally. it is best to have read the literature.

Published 12 months ago by andy

Five Stars

Educational for many work related issues.

Published 12 months ago by Lucas

Well written and inspiring.

Charles Kenny writes with the thoroughness and objectivity of an experienced journalist. He chronicles the Quality and Safety Movement in Medicine that was too long in coming, and... Read more

Published on January 3, 2012 by Phl Benton, MD, JD

The Best Practice: How the New Quality Movement isTransforming...

A great historical review of the quality movement and leaders within healthcare who have been successful as leaders in the quality movement. Read more

Published on April 18, 2010 by Patricia Camire

Excellent Quality Movement Summary

Charles Kenney's book is insightful and is written to be read easily. The story of today's quality movement in healthcare, from its inception in the "Breakfast Club" to the major... Read more

Published on October 16, 2008 by James C. Sparks

Where there's hope...

I think Mr Kenney offers an honest and somewhat optimistic take on the health care challenges facing our country. Read more

Published on September 30, 2008 by Brian A. Mcguire