Salon talks with Dr. Atul Gawande:
We have that data on maternal and infant mortality, but that’s about it. The fact that we have no idea about how our health systems are doing now versus, say, two years ago -- that flabbergasts me. [W]e’re obsessed with components in medicine: Do I have the best medicine, do I have the best doctor? The reality is that a doctor embedded in one system may get different results than if he or she were embedded in a different one. Some studies have started to show doctors getting different results when they work in more than one hospital. I think it’s much more critical for patients to see how good a system can be. Because care requires a whole chain of events.