haynes rb

We have frequently advocated the evidence-based medicine (EBM) approach to improve the care of individual patients, and to improve health care quality at a reasonable cost for populations.

Evidence-based medicine is not just medicine based on some sort of evidence. As Dr David Sackett, and colleagues wrote [Sackett DL, Rosenberg WM, Muir Gray JA, Haynes RB, Richardson WS.

Evidence-based medicine; what it is and what it isn't. BMJ 1996; 312: 71-72. Link here.

]

As I posted yesterday, the increasingly noisy debate about health care reform in the US has not dealt much with the issues we often discuss on Health Care Renewal.

These include problems in how health care organizations are lead which threaten physicians' and other health care professionals' core values using tactics including perverse incentives, deception, and intimidation.

There he goes again. An op-ed a little while back by Peter J Pitts in the Washington Times took another whack at evidence-based medicine (EBM).

He started by saying all the current US Presidential candidates want to control health care costs using EBM.