December 25, 2007 |  4
I recently participated in a meeting whose aim was to develop safety measures for hospital units (ie, med-surg, ED, L&D). As various measures were being ticked off, I muttered that we should also try to capture errors that occur as patients move between units. One of my colleagues, quite sensibly, asked, “but who will be […]
December 20, 2007 |  2
Today my pals Peter Lindenauer and Andy Auerbach (and colleagues) published the largest hospitalist outcomes study to date, in the New England Journal of Medicine. It is a rigorous, important piece of work. Let me try to add a bit of context. First, the What’s What. Using the massive database of the Premier system (which […]
December 18, 2007 |  2
I’ve not been posting regularly on this story (as you might imagine, it’s a bit tricky for me to do so), but for those following it from near and far (I’ve received emails from friends in Europe and Asia) there have been a number of interesting articles, including pieces in the LA Times, Washington Post, […]
December 14, 2007 |  5
Well, today the great Mecca of medical care and innovation that is UCSF all but ground to a halt. Our Dean was just let go under very odd circumstances, and everyone’s flocking to water coolers and Starbucks around the city to find out who knows what. I won’t be giving away any trade secrets here, […]
December 14, 2007 |  1
My older son is gearing up to apply to college (:-\ and so I bought him one of the Bibles, the Fiske Guide. The book is cleverly written – enough academic factoids to get parents to spring for it, leavened with enough social scene skinny to get kids to read it. The Guide dutifully lists […]
December 9, 2007 |  6
Let’s make this short and sweet. In this week’s New Yorker, Atul Gawande describes Peter Pronovost’s crusade to improve the safety of intensive care through the use of checklists. If it sounds dull, it’s not. In fact, it is thrilling and inspiring. Gawande glides effortlessly from microscopic detail to panoramic view and back again to […]