Book Review: Better Medical Practice is Not Rocket Science

I have posted a review of Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande on the Development Gateway.

The brief, easy-to-read book provides the Gawande's observations on how to improve public health and medical practice, with examples from developing countries as well as the United States. Gawande says improving medical practice “does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try”

The book emphasizes the importance of developing appropriate indicators of patient outcomes, of monitoring those outcomes, and of managing service delivery actively to improve performance. I take from his book the lesson that improving the management of the health care delivery system may be even more important in terms of technological improvements than replication or scale-up of pilot projects or explicit efforts to diffuse successful innovations. This lesson should generalize to other sectors beside health!

Click here to go to the Development Gateway where you can download the Review.