You have reluctantly left the blogosphere bubble for an afternoon to view a special exhibit at an art museum. You join a crowd who is gawking at a towering marble sculpture. Is it a true masterpiece or simply the work of a talented local art student? How do you accurately assess the work’s worth and quality? Even art scholars may not be able to agree on the piece’s value or if the work is counterfeit. If there is no sure way to measure its value, should we resort instead to using the sculpture’s weight as a quality surrogate just because it is easy to measure? This is ludicrous, but this is exactly what’s happening in the medical field. Let’s not resort to misleading and inaccurate methods of measuring medical quality because we haven’t figured out yet how to do it right. Each year, physicians and hospitals are subjected to still more ‘quality’ initiatives which burden the medical community without improving medical performance. After 3 years of participating in Medicare’s PQRI (Physic
MD Whistleblower presents vignettes and commentaries on the medical profession. We peek 'behind the medical curtain' and deliver candor and controversy in every post.