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

Niche interest but well done. Recommended for early studies of value and improvement in healthcare. This book was published in 2008 and so is a bit dated now, but provides a good foundation for understanding later initiatives such as Choosing Wisely. A solid read.

Charles Kenney has assembled here a (generally) linear collection of anecdotes, medical personalities, and health care policy observations titled "Best Practice." Whether or not best practices are effectively elucidated within the book is debatable. There are included here several well worn and frequently cited examples of medical errors and patient tragedies that are not unfamiliar to readers of this genre. Also familiar are physicians and administrators currently highly visible in the national meetings, lay press, and medical literature serving as the fora to define the meaning of "value" for the United States medical system. The book, for those of you who are building your knowledge of the Quality Movement, breaks no new ground. Moving through the chapters from front to back, the book's lack of objective tone is initially distracting, and then annoying, and then downright aggravating. Kenney hasn't met a hyperbole he couldn't work into still another glowing sentence about one or the other of the "protagonists" or "exemplary" healthcare systems of the story. The verb and adjective choices are consistently fawning and effusive, and it quickly gets to the point that there's just way too much icing on mighty too little cake. The TRANSFORMING HEALTH CARE book about the Virginia Mason system is also written by Kenney, and you, like me, will readily recognize that fact before checking out just who the author is on the dust jacket, from the same compendium of excessive adjectives and overstated verbs. Buy a copy for your library for completeness sake, or if you are a politician auditioning writers to be your biographer.

Charles Kenny writes with the thoroughness and objectivity of an experienced journalist. He chronicles the Quality and Safety Movement in Medicine that was too long in coming, and applauds those who overcame the medical culture of infallibility and mind-your-own-business laissez faire in patient care. After reading this, others are now inspired to alter our "deny and defend" legal culture that litigates stressfully then settles claims in secret, so no lessons can be learned and Medicine is not made better. The Veritas Lex Medicus project promotes honest and efficient resolution with just compensation for real medical error.

For doctor or patient understanding the movement for quality and safety in medicine is key to understanding the healthcare debate. It is a fascinating history and the story is well told.

used this book professionally. it is best to have read the literature.

Highly recommended

Best book ever read.

Great book. Easy read

The only issue with this book is managing to find it on Amazon!But as you are reading this you have at least succeeded in doing this.This book is inspirational, it lays down the history of the quality movement in healthcare and it gives prominence to Dr W Edwards Deming who is the guru of quality. This is the man who taught the Japanese about quality (read this book for more on this hero - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dr-Deming-American-Japanese-ebook/dp/B003VIX1AY/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334513679&sr=1-5)Everything is here from IHI to Jonkoping, presented in a very accessible fashion this book will inspire you to read further and develop your own strategies for creating a quality movement in your own organisations.Buy this book but most importantly - READ THIS BOOK NOW