Closing the Loop: Facilitating the Use of Autopsy Information in Medical Decision Making and Managed Care

This paper advances the somewhat paradoxical hypothesis that the emergence of managed care which threatens to accelerate the decline of the autopsy may, in fact, offer an opportunity for its re-emergence as an important tool of quality and cost control. A simplified autopsy-based management information structure is proposed to close the loop where information currently gleaned from the autopsy is frequently unused or underutilized in medical decision making and managed care.