Favorite Quotes
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." - HL Mencken
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"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." - Confucius
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"The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease" - Sir William Osler
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" The best test of a person's character is how he or she treats those with less power." - Bob Sutton
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"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them - well, I have others." - Groucho Marx
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"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
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"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them" - Friedrich Nietzsche
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"Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple." - Charles Mingus
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"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - Albert Einstein
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around." - Talking Heads, Life During Wartime
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"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it." - Hillel, Talmud, Shabbath 31a
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"You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing." - Thomas Sowell
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"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." - HL Mencken
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"If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." - Abraham Maslow
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"A great teacher is one who realizes that he himself is also a student and whose goal is not to dictate the answers, but to stimulate his students creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves." - Herbie Hancock
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"There are no facts, only interpretations." - Nietzsche
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"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't." - Anatole France
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"In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ====
Nov - 15
Dec - 19
Jan - 21
Feb - 8
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Posts Tagged ‘what is quality’
Quality measurement – a delusion
26, Apr 2009Everyone wants to insure quality. Quality is job #1. Who can be against quality? We should measure quality, report it, reward it, and publicize it.
But what is quality medical care? Can we measure it easily?
Many argue that we can measure quality. My friend and colleague, Bob Wachter, argues for quality measurement – On Quality Measurement, [...]
- In: Medical Rants
- Tags: what is quality
How to insure quality
13, Apr 2009
I received a comment today on my quality rant.
Even when the guidelines have retrospectively been shown to be flawed, where’s the evidence of patient harm? Did the harm outweigh the benefits? You should know better than to make an argument without these numbers.
Sounds like a straw-man argument to me. If you’ll actually take the time [...]
- In: Medical Rants
- Tags: what is quality
Groopman on quality
12, Apr 2009
Regular readers know my opinion on P4P. I have often expressed my concerns about calling something quality when in fact it only represents one of many dimensions of a complex concept called quality.
Dr. Groopman and colleague have an outstanding editorial which makes the case once again – Why ‘Quality’ Care Is Dangerous
These and other recent [...]
- In: Medical Rants
- Tags: what is quality
What is quality medical care?
9, Feb 2009
UnitedHealth and I.B.M. Test Health Care Plan
UnitedHealth will try giving doctors more authority and money than usual in return for closely monitoring their patients’ progress, even when patients go to specialists or require hospitalization. The insurer will also move away from paying doctors solely on the basis of how many services they provide, and [...]
- In: Medical Rants
- Tags: what is quality
Quality improvement is a misnomer
30, Nov 2008
Readers know that I am obsessed with semantics. I know that words are powerful. Oft times words are labels. Too often people use words to obfuscate meaning. My hypothesis is that quality improvement is an obfuscating phrase.
The key here is the definition of quality. How does one measure quality? Opinion leaders have made the leap [...]
- In: Fixing health care
- Tags: what is quality
More on diagnostic errors
11, Jun 2008
I have been writing about the importance of accurate diagnosis throughout the 6+ years of this blog’s existence. I frequently opine that the quality movement has ignored diagnostic accuracy because it is not easily measured.
Maggie Mahar tries to address this issue in two recent blog entries – The Silence Surrounding Diagnostic Errors; Part I and [...]
- In: Medical Rants
- Tags: what is quality
db’s medrants 2007 considered – the year of quality
31, Dec 2007Allow me some time to consider my main messages over the last year. My blog has evolved significantly since starting in May 2002. Originally I focused on finding health related links. I would make some commentary, but rarely wrote essay style entries. Now I probably spend more time exploring ideas. [...]
- In: Medical Rants
- Tags: what is quality