RT Book, Section
A1 Howell, Michael D.
A1 Stevens, Jennifer P.
SR Print(0)
ID 1167643883
T1 Quality and Safety in Healthcare: The Evidence So Far
T2 Understanding Healthcare Delivery Science
YR 2020
FD 2020
PB McGraw-Hill Education
PP New York, NY
SN 9781260026481
LK accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1167643883
RD 2024/04/25
AB Much  of  this  chapter  will  focus  on  sobering  statistics  about  quality  and  safety  and  healthcare,  but  we  start  simply  with  this:  Healthcare  today  is  the  best  the  world  has  ever  seen.  Just  two  centuries  ago,  the  average  life  expectancy  was  only  about  25  years.  Today,  it  is  more  than  70.  Infant  mortality  has  fallen  dramatically,  not  only  in  the  United  States  (Figure  3-1),  but  also  worldwide.  And  improvements  haven’t  only  been  because  of  reduced  infant  mortality:  life  expectancy  after  the  age  of  65  has  also  risen.  Diseases  that  used  to  be  uniformly  lethal  have  been  converted  to  chronic,  manageable  conditions.  Formerly  experimental,  esoteric  treatments  are  now  routine.  For  example,  between  1990  and  2016,  the  use  of  bone  marrow  and  stem  cell  transplantation  more  than  tripled,1  and  today  we  use  a  patient’s  own  reengineered  T  cells  to  target  their  cancer—something  that  would  have  seemed  like  science  fiction  only  a  few  years  ago.  Healthcare  today  is  the  best  the  world  has  ever  seen.