Healthcare is an activity, a human action, performed in the interest of another human being, for the restoration of some aspect of the health of the other. That the actions of healthcare have this clear goal, allows them to be and to be judged as more or less effective in reaching it. In this sense, they can be better, no better, or worse.
Experience and experimentation have discovered and established specific ways in which healthcare actions can be shaped and conducted so as, reliably, to have more probability of ending in the desired effects. These ways are each described in formal clinical protocols, procedures, care maps, etc. Application of these procedures offers further and refining experience. Through this continual critical observation, ineffective features are removed and, perhaps, more effective features are added. The probability gradually increases that a given action or series of steps will produce a desired outcome. Thus, later procedures are better than those initially introduced.
