Clark and Steinhorn support efforts to reduce or eliminate medical negligence and medical malpractice. Here is a simple way.

Lets be honest ,if you go to Jiffy Lube and get an oil-change, you get a checklist of what they did. It reassures you but more importantly, it reminds the Jiffy Lube employees not to miss someting important in the routine of their jobs.

So would a simple checklist help reduce medical mistakes in Maryland, the District of Columbia and nationwide?

Apparently, the answer is an emphatic yes. Dr. Atul Gawande, first gained national attention in his 2007 New Yorker article entitled simply "The Checklist". http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande

Dr. Gawande made an appearance on January 6, 2010 on the much-loved Diane Rehm radio show to elaborate on "the Checklist" and many other topics. Among his conclusions, the widespread use of solitary confinement in this country constitutes torture or constitutionally proscribed "cruel and unusual punishment". http://wamu.org/programs/dr/10/01/06.php#29280

Dr. Gawande, while a proponent of checklists in intensive or critical care medicine, does not purport to have originated the idea. For that he focuses on Dr. Peter Pronovost of Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Dr. Pronovost put together a limited scope critical care checklist applicable to one of the biggest problems, infection.

Doctors had a simple list of procedures to which they were supposed to adhere when putting in a patient's central line: (1) wash their hands with soap, (2) clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic, (3) put sterile drapes over the entire patient, (4) wear a sterile mask, hat, gown, and gloves, and (5) put a sterile dressing over the catheter site once the line is in.