In addition, they are also significantly more costly. The differences are even greater, depending on the obstetrician who performs the delivery. The thinking is that in doing so, doctors will be able to reduce the number of unnecessary caesarians, benefiting patients and lowering costs at the same time. Similarly, the Consortium found that some 6.3 percent of patients who had total hip replacement surgery in the 12-month period it researched had to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days. By collaborating, the Consortium hopes the surgeons can improve those statistics.
Experience elsewhere suggests it can mean a lot.
Salt Lake City's Intermountain Health Care System 13 years ago mounted what is now one of the most widely lauded quality improvement programs. Using its flagship LDS Hospital as a laboratory, it developed 65 protocols for either reducing practice variations among physicians or bringing all physicians into line with certain standards of care that were deemed the best, based on research. One clear example of its success was reducing the rate of deep wound infections among patients who had surgery by more than half in less than three years, said Dr. Brent James, IHC's medical research director. The rate went from 1.8 percent, which was already lower than a national average of about 2.5 percent, to 0.4 percent. James, in a phone interview, said he believes that the Consortium's quality initiative is both well conceived and ambitious.