A Recipe For Quality Healthcare? Ctd

by Patrick Appel

Atul Gawande recently argued that hospital chains can improve the American healthcare system. Austin Frakt is skeptical:

Gawande spends much of the article illustrating how the Cheesecake Factory manages to tight standards, increasing quality and lowering costs along the way. His claim is that, like chain restaurants such as the Cheesecake Factory, hospital chains are in a better position to achieve higher quality at lower costs by exploiting economies of scale, making investments that would not be feasible for smaller organizations.

I’m on board with Gawande that hospital chains should make such quality-improving, cost-lowering investments. I’m even on board that they could. I’m skeptical that they will, and the evidence from the past is that they, by and large, don’t.