Hi Bob - I'm on east coast time so saw this early - great interview and tough line to sell. Maybe more personal accountability will cause clinicians to actually press for the system changes that can support better performance on their part - like adopting CPOE...Molly

"The challenge, though, is to standardize care in a way that will improve safety while retaining the parts that make medicine human."

Sounds like a good way to define "meaningful use" in the HITECH world.

Dr. Wachter gave a great interview.  I agree that there is a lot more that needs to be done to improve patient safety.  

Read through the WellBlog comment thread.  You don't need Kevlar, you need a fully stocked concrete bunker!

10 years on, and we just need to keep pushing.  In my own patient safety work areas (IT/CPOE/medication reconciliation), it's easily recognizable as a marathon, not a sprint.

Ever forward.

Great interview and looks like a serious discussion in the photograph :-)  

One particular comment you make is of particular interest to me -

"You can standardize certain parts of care based on clear evidence, which will free up doctors to focus on those pieces of the health care puzzle where there is no data — those issues that are uniquely human and that require judgment, expertise and empathy."

I have been researching the discharge process and its implications to preventable readmissions. There seem to be enough good reasons to improve discharge process in addition to reduction of readmissions (patient safety). There also seems to be a mountain of data around what works, what is broken, what are best practices etc. And yet, I have not come across any effort to "standardize" the discharge process.

Would this be one of the areas that you would recommend standardization of care per your comment? Has there been any attempt to drive such standardization of discharge processes or at least the discharge summary? Can you or your readers shed some light on this?

Regards

SS

Health IT Guy