There’s a constant battle in medicine between practice styles—standardization and customization. Standardization is order sets and doing the same thing for every patient every time because it (hopefully) delivers better care, either by being faster, less error-prone, or less costly.

I don’t think anyone questions standardization of care—timeouts before surgery, ECGs for chest pain, order sets for STEMI care.

But critics quickly point to the opposite approach, customization of care.

What if that STEMI is actually a GI bleed causing critical ischemia?

Shouldn’t we as physicians take a history, practice medicine, and customize the care to the individual patient?

Can’t robots do our job if we’re only practicing standardized care?

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