Ernest Amory Codman, M.D., and End Results of Medical Care

Abstract

Ernest Amory Codman, M.D., was one of the most important figures in the history of outcomes research in medicine. While his contemporaries scorned his efforts to create systematic procedures to evaluate the end results of medical care, his work foreshadowed many of today's most pressing issues in technology assessment. This article traces Codman's career as an innovator and political gadfly at the Massachusetts General Hospital during the first three decades of this century, and examines the development and demise of his end-result system.