Doctors quickly learn that how much they make has little to do with how good they are. It largely depends on how they handle the business side of their practice. Atul Gawande Read Quote
Most people are squeamish about saying how much they earn, but in medicine the situation seems especially fraught. Doctors aren’t supposed to be in it for the money, and the more concerned a doctor seems to be about making money the more suspicious people become about the care being provided. Atul Gawande Read Quote
Health care confronts us with a difficult test. We have never corrected failure in something so deeply embedded in people’s lives and in the economy without the pressure of an outright crisis. Atul Gawande Read Quote
We now live in the era of the super-specialist – of clinicians who have taken the time to practice at one narrow thing until they can do it better than anyone who hasn’t. Atul Gawande Read Quote
In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty. Atul Gawande Read Quote
As economists have often pointed out, we pay doctors for quantity, not quality. As they point out less often, we also pay them as individuals, rather than as members of a team working together for their patients. Both practices have made for serious problems. Atul Gawande Read Quote
The history of American agriculture suggests that you can have transformation without a master plan, without knowing all the answers up front. Atul Gawande Read Quote
There are, in human affairs, two kinds of problems: those which are amenable to a technical solution and those which are not. Universal health-care coverage belongs to the first category: you can pick one of several possible solutions, pass a bill, and (allowing for some tinkering around the edges) it will happen. Atul Gawande Read Quote
The health-care sector certainly employs more people and more machines than it did. But there have been no great strides in service. In Western Europe, most primary-care practices now use electronic health records and offer after-hours care; in the United States, most don’t. Atul Gawande Read Quote
When I do an operation, it’s half a dozen people. When it goes beautifully, it’s like a symphony, with everybody playing their part. Atul Gawande Read Quote