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

by Charles C. Kenney

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586486195
• ISBN13: 9781586486198
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Length: 315 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.8" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

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 national symposia now presented by that Club's successor, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is both enlightening and inspiring. A most valuable addition to my library.

Best Practice

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.

IHI plus

An excellent review of the history of the quality improvement movement in America. Easy to read, informative, and concise. I highly recommend it for anyone who involved in health care administration. It would be an excellent introduction into the QI process for hospital board of directors. Jim Slavin

A good review of hospital "Best Practice" Issues

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

Real, Measurable Quality in Health Care

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.