The Health-Care Breakthrough That Wasn’t
New Jersey researchers thought they had a new way to control hospital costs. It took a randomized control trial to show that they were wrong.
Keep it random.
Photographer: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AFP via Getty ImagesNine years ago, the health-care world was atwitter at reports of a promising new way to control spiraling medical costs.
Atul Gawande, the respected surgeon and author, had written an article in the New Yorker publicizing the success of treating patients in Camden, New Jersey, who were driving up costs with constant, repeated visits to hospital emergency rooms. It seemed that close monitoring and counseling of these patients by a specially trained team of nurses, social workers and community health professionals could steer them away from making unnecessary hospital visits by giving them better and cheaper ways to take care of their medical problems.