Demanding Medical Excellence : Doctors and Accountability in the Information Age

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Summary: Excellent analysis and a delight to read!
Review: "Demanding Medical Excellence" is a thoughtful, well-researched, credible illumination of both the stumbling blocks to providing efficient, quality health care and the opportunities afforded by new information technologies. I am an experienced health care professional and am very involved in efforts to influence health policy and health services delivery. "Demanding Medical Excellence" added depth to my understanding of the issues of accountability in medicine and information as a currency of power. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the facts and implications of current efforts to change the way health care is delivered. It is engaging, informed and important.

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Summary: Medical thriller keeps you turning the pages!
Review: Millenson's remarkable survey of the lesser known activities that constitute or impact the direct or indirect delivery of medical services is a 'must read' for those of us in the health care industry. While his analysis of the evolution of health care quality drives his narrative, its compelling appeal for me are the revealing insights on how well the medical community has consistently avoided acceptance of data driven research into day to day medical practice. Relying instead on practice behaviors learned during school or internships, there is strong evidence of the astonishing variability in how patients are medically treated. If medicine is now a marketplace commodity, the medical community has no one to blame except themselves. As a health care consultant, I can attest to the lost opportunities physicians had to take hold of their own destiny. Millenson cites many of them in this exciting journey of lost accountability. This book is a wonderful adjunct to Paul Star's "Social Transformation of American Medicine" and makes for fascinating, page turning, reading.

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Summary: Those mistakes were corrected
Review: The mistakes mentioned by a reviewer above concerning hand-washing and hepatic necrosis were either not present or corrected before the printing of my copy of the book.