Michael Lewis’ Moneyball is an excellent book, and I regularly use its baseball insight when I play historical fantasy baseball over at Diamond Mind Online.
A NY Times op-ed written by the primary Moneyball disciple Billy Beane, along with Newt Gingrich and John Kerry, wants medicine to endorse more objective data when making clinical decisions.
They’re essentially proposing a comparative effectiveness institute, where a national body can make empirical recommendations of what works and what doesn’t, based on data from studies.
I’m in agreement with the concept. However, my biggest concern is how patients will accept it. With the mentality of “more medicine is better care” so entrenched in the American patient, how will they accept it when an MRI for back pain, or an angioplasty for stable coronary artery disease is denied?
Imagine the outcry when the latest cancer therapy gets denied.
Embracing the numbers is nice, but a significant effort to educate the public on the ramifications of evidence-based medicine is equally important.
