Featured blog post: Atul Gawande--Why healthcare should be like baseball

Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, gave the keynote address at this week’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality 2010 Annual Conference in Bethesda, MD. Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Faber Cancer Institute, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, and, perhaps, is best known for his work as a staff writer for The New Yorker and a New York Times best-selling author.

Among some of the inspiring words was Gawande’s proposal that the healthcare system use science to improve patient safety and change the culture of medicine.

Ringing a bell with Boston attendees, Gawande referenced former Red Sox general manager (now Oakland A’s general manager) Billy Beane’s approach to baseball. Using statistics, Beane recruited Kevin Youkilis and acknowledged his ability to get onto first base, despite his reputation for being a pudgy and poor third baseman. Youkilis went onto become a two-time World Series champion.

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