In honor of the status update meme that’s been sweeping Facebook, I’ve been thinking today about a fascinating New Yorker story that was published June 1: The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care.
My mother, who has worked in the health care industry for years, passed it along to me a while back.
The writer, Atul Gawande, is a surgeon. He describes in great detail the huge disparities in Medicare costs seen in two similar Texas communities, and reports on the collaborative, team-based approaches at places such as the Mayo Clinic that yield great results without breaking the bank.
Gawande posted a followup item three weeks after “The Cost Conundrum” appeared.
Gawande, also a Harvard professor, is interviewed on NPR here, and at the Washington Post here.
(Warning: the original story, in fine New Yorker tradition, is quite lengthy.)
