Assessment of Medical Practices

OF all the ways proposed to control the runaway costs of health care in this country, "technology assessment" is probably the least controversial. (It isn't exactly noncontroversial, but nothing is these days.) The idea that we could save money through better evaluation of medical practices is powerfully appealing because it offers the possibility of improving the quality of care while moderating its cost. If we only knew more about the efficacy and safety of the tests and procedures that we use in practice, so the reasoning goes, we could concentrate on the best, reduce usage of the marginal, and eliminate . . .