Ernest Codman

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Ernest Amory Codman, M.D., (December 30, 1869-1940) was a U.S. physician.^[1] He was an advocate of hospital reform and is the acknowledged founder of what today is known as outcomes management in patient care. 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 mortality & morbidity 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.

With an interest in health care quality, Dr. Codman also helped lead the founding of the American College of Surgeons and its Hospital Standardization Program. The latter entity eventually became the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. He also established the first bone tumor registry in the United States, an idea which had first been suggested by the British physician Sir Thomas Percival in 1803.

Dr. Codman's name is also attached to "Codman's Exercises," a series of exercises for the purpose or regaining range of motion (see Physical therapy), and "Codman's Tumor," a benign tumor of the cartilage.

Dr. Codman married Katherine P. Bowditch on November 16, 1899.

In 1996, in tribute to Ernest Codman, M.D., the Joint Commission published the book "Codman: A Study in Hospital Efficiency." The Commission also established the Ernest A. Codman Award for the use of outcomes measures to advance the quality and safety of patient care.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ The middle name is sometimes given incorrectly. "Amory" is correct as shown by his works and Harvard documentation available online in image form.

[edit] References

• Ernest Armory Codman. www.whonamedit.com. Retrieved on 2006-06-23.
• Facts about the Ernest Amory Codman Award. www.jointcommission.org. Retrieved on 2006-06-23.
• Puzzling over Medical Mysteries. dartmed.dartmouth.edu. Retrieved on 2006-06-23.
• Quality and Safety in Health Care. qhc.bmjjournals.com. Retrieved on 2006-06-23.
• Codman, Ernest Amory (1908). Bursitis subacronialis, or periarthritis of the shoulder joint (sub-deltoid bursitis). 
• Codman, Ernest A. (1916). A Study in Hospital Efficiency. Boston, Mass.: Privately printed. 
• Mallon, Bill (2000). Ernest Amory Codman: The End Result of a Life in Medicine. Philadelphia: WB Saunders. ISBN 0-7216-8461-0. 
• Millenson, Michael (1997). Demanding Medical Excellence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-52588-0.