Following the impersonal process leads to better outcomes in aggregate because it's less labor-intensive; and so doctors end up seeing more patients; and so more patients end up being seen.
If the personalized process performs better on medical outcomes. Then over time doctors should be pushed to include more personalized steps in their treatment plans. I actually think that in many cases, personalized steps are already included in treatment plans that contain many branching paths.
It's also quantitatively true that in some cases (I believe most cases, but I don't have a good data set in front of me), a well validated flowchart leads to much better diagnoses and healthcare outcomes.
A good example: When a standardized checklist for the diagnosis of a heart attack was first introduced, doctors were upset about it, claiming that it took away professional judgement from clinical assessments.
Over time though, the checklist proved itself to be much more effective at diagnosing heart attacks than the vast majority of doctors. And most people who were having a heart attack were diagnosed correctly.
Of course some people will still be misdiagnosed (and unfortunately the misdiagnosed ones often fall into minority groups). But the statistically validated processes are not aiming for perfect. They're aiming for better than a human can do, most of the time.
And research will improve the flowcharts over time.
It also means that we can begin to think about delegating routine assessments where outcomes are very well understood to nurses, leaving doctors free to think about more complicated cases.
Following the impersonal process leads to better outcomes in aggregate because it's less labor-intensive; and so doctors end up seeing more patients; and so more patients end up being seen.
If the personalized process performs better on medical outcomes. Then over time doctors should be pushed to include more personalized steps in their treatment plans. I actually think that in many cases, personalized steps are already included in treatment plans that contain many branching paths.
It's also quantitatively true that in some cases (I believe most cases, but I don't have a good data set in front of me), a well validated flowchart leads to much better diagnoses and healthcare outcomes.
A good example: When a standardized checklist for the diagnosis of a heart attack was first introduced, doctors were upset about it, claiming that it took away professional judgement from clinical assessments.
Over time though, the checklist proved itself to be much more effective at diagnosing heart attacks than the vast majority of doctors. And most people who were having a heart attack were diagnosed correctly.
Of course some people will still be misdiagnosed (and unfortunately the misdiagnosed ones often fall into minority groups). But the statistically validated processes are not aiming for perfect. They're aiming for better than a human can do, most of the time.
And research will improve the flowcharts over time.
It also means that we can begin to think about delegating routine assessments where outcomes are very well understood to nurses, leaving doctors free to think about more complicated cases.