I came across this article in the New Yorker’s Annals of Medicine column, and found the conclusion to be pretty amazing. The article reminds me a lot of a Malcolm Gladwell piece, in that it’s a bunch of fascinating statistics about a subject that most writers would struggle to make sound interesting, supported by a handful of equally-interesting stories.

It makes the case for checklists in hospitals. I initially assumed that it was like most medical terms, in that the name intuitively elicits imagery of something entirely unrelated to what the term actually describes. But that’s not the case here. It talks about having a five-item checklist for the steps to take while installing a “central line” on a patient, something that’s a cakewalk for trained surgeons. Many doctors protested, finding it demeaning. But the results?

The results were so dramatic that they weren’t sure whether to believe them: the ten-day line-infection rate went from eleven per cent to zero. So they followed patients for fifteen more months. Only two line infections occurred during the entire period. They calculated that, in this one hospital, the checklist had prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs.

I haven’t stolen the article’s thunder, either: it gets better. Maybe it’s just for people like me, who find boring things fascinating, but I can’t help but be struck by how something so ridiculously simple that doctors are offended by it can save so many lives and so many millions in costs.

By the way, this all comes from a silly Ask MetaFilter thread, What are innovative ideas for healthcare to save money, increase efficiency and improve outcomes?