Atul Gawande Quotes & Sayings (Page 4)

“I was never born to write. I was taught to write. And I am still being taught to write.”

“Health care confronts us with a difficult test. We have never corrected failure in something so deeply embedded in people's lives and in the economy without the pressure of an outright crisis.”

“Our health-care morass is like the problems of global warming and the national debt - the kind of vast policy failure that is far easier to get into than to get out of. Americans say that they want leaders who will take on these problems.”

“My vantage point on the world is the operating room where I see my patients.”

“Doctors quickly learn that how much they make has little to do with how good they are. It largely depends on how they handle the business side of their practice.”

“People say that the most expensive piece of medical equipment is the doctor's pen. It's not that we make all the money. It's that we order all the money.”

“The health-care sector certainly employs more people and more machines than it did. But there have been no great strides in service. In Western Europe, most primary-care practices now use electronic health records and offer after-hours care; in the United States, most don't.”

“The vast majority of doctors really do try to take the money out of their minds. But to provide the best possible care requires using resources in a way that keeps you viable but improves the quality of care.”

“There are, in human affairs, two kinds of problems: those which are amenable to a technical solution and those which are not. Universal health-care coverage belongs to the first category: you can pick one of several possible solutions, pass a bill, and (allowing for some tinkering around the edges) it will happen.”