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The Need for International Cooperation

Robert H. Brook, MD, ScD

JAMA. 1993;270(8):985-987.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

NOT long ago, hospitals were considered places to die. More recently, with the introduction of modern surgery and medication, hospitals became safe places in which many people obtained substantial benefit. Today, hospitals are perceived from conflicting perspectives. On the one hand, they are places where lives are saved. On the other hand, they are places where enormous amounts of money are spent and the cost-effectiveness of these expenditures is being questioned, and where some "care" provided there is of no benefit or even harmful. These latter perceptions have led some governments to reduce the growth in hospital funding. This, in turn, has led to unnecessary deaths, increased complication rates, and long waits for elective surgical procedures that are performed to alleviate pain and improve functional status. Hospital quality could decline further if changes in health policy do not explicitly attempt to maintain it.^1,2

While the perception of the hospital's . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Health Sciences Program, RAND, Santa Monica, Calif, and the Departments of Medicine and Health Services, UCLA Center for Health Sciences, Los Angeles, Calif.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to RAND, 1700 Main St, PO Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138.

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