Learning to Deliver Consistent Healthcare

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In a Queen's School of Business (QSB) article, David Chan, an assistant professor of Medicine and CHP/PCOR core faculty member, discusses his new study on the cost of variation in medical practices.  The article shows that large variation in medical testing caused by "weak best practices" leads to greater healthcare spending.  According to Chan, there is significant variation in general medicine practices but little variation in specialty areas, and he found that "worker characteristics and formally learned differences have little role in explaining practice variation, at least within organizations.”  Decreasing practice variation could decrease healthcare spending in the U.S. substantially.