Best practices in health care — which I define as simultaneously reducing health care costs while improving quality of life — are often hard to find, but do exist.  The New York Times had a nice profile on Sunday of Bellin Health, a Green Bay health care system.

Low cost:  in the top 4% of hospitals holding down costs in the last two years of life, with spending per Medicare recipient 20 below the national average, per the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care.

High quality: among the best in the nation in preventing deaths and hospital readmission from heart attacks, preventing infections and pneumonia.
Read more in the article here on Bellin Health’s methods.  My point:  Analyzable data on health care methods, costs, and outcomes is essential to health care reform, and this is just one example of how it can work.