This is a blog for the Mental Health Policy Class at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.

October 22, 2009

Pooling health care’s best ideas

Globalization is inescapable. A soda sold in Georgia is available in any country in the world. A farmer in Iowa may travel to India for heart bypass surgery. Companies realize that growth in the next decade is more likely to be grounded in Asia than in America or Europe. The world has undeniably become a much smaller place, and it continues to shrink at an amazing rate. . . .
The Institute of Medicine estimates that there is an 18-year time lag between conception of a new medical practice and implementation of that practice. Between 10 and 17 years can elapse for even the most basic innovative practices to be shared and adopted by the international health community. In the 17 years it took to adopt best practices for infection control now used in hospitals worldwide, for example, countless people needlessly suffered during a course of nearly two decades.

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