Ernest Codman
| Ernest Amory Codman | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
30 December 1869 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | 23 November 1940 (aged 70) Ponkapog, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Medicine, Surgery |
| Institutions |
Massachusetts General Hospital Harvard University |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Known for | Establishing end results based medical care. |
Ernest Amory Codman, M.D., (December 30, 1869 – November 23, 1940) was a pioneering Boston surgeon who made contributions to anaesthesiology, radiology, duodenal ulcer surgery, orthopaedic oncology, shoulder surgery, and the study of medical outcomes.
Codman was born in Boston Massachusetts. He attended the Fay School in Southborough, and prepped at St. Mark's School, matriculating at Harvard College.
He was an advocate of hospital reform and is the acknowledged founder of what today is known as outcomes management in patient care. Codman was the first American doctor to follow the progress of patients through their recoveries in a systematic manner. He kept track of his patients via "End Result Cards" which contained basic demographic data on every patient treated, along with the diagnosis, the treatment he rendered, and the outcome of each case. Each patient was followed up on for at least one year to observe long-term outcomes. It was his lifelong pursuit to establish an "end results system" to track the outcomes of patient treatments as an opportunity to identify clinical misadventures that serve as the foundation for improving the care of future patients. He also believed that all of this information should be made public so that patients could be guided in their choices of physicians and hospitals.
Codman graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1895 and interned at Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined the surgical staff of Massachusetts General and became a member of the Harvard faculty. While there, he instituted the first morbidity and mortality conferences. However, in 1914, the hospital refused his plan for evaluating surgeon competence, and he lost his staff privileges there. Dr. Codman eventually established his own hospital (which he called the "End Result Hospital") to pursue the performance measurement and improvement objectives he believed in so fervently. To support his "end results theory," Dr. Codman made public the end results of his own hospital in a privately published book, A Study in Hospital Efficiency. Of the 337 patients discharged between 1911 and 1916, Dr. Codman recorded and published 123 errors.
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