Health care II

I have no idea how I keep stumbling upon these long articles on health care. What started as a casual read on the health care got a little bit involved. But as far as health care or financial reform goes, its absolutely impossible to understand or keep track of it from the daily tidbits in the media (for a layperson).

David Leonhardt's recent article on improving the efficiency of health care is informative and insightful. An elaborate discussion on how Intermountain, a health care system in Utah and Idaho, achieved better health care (at a lower cost) by establishing evidence based treatment guidelines for different clinical conditions. It is comforting to know that there is a solution to the health care conundrum. Implementation is a story for another day.

One of the interesting information to emerge from the article is the fact that Medicare has published a wealth of data on the web that compares hospitals based on various parameters (of health care). Check out the website here. I was immediately tempted to check the hospitals close by my locality and was astounded by the staggering amount of information available to people.