If one measure of a society’s success is how it treats its members who are most in need, many countries — including those considered to be “developed” — have achieved precious little success. In the United States, for instance, the life expectancy of a black child in Baltimore, Maryland, is seven years shorter than that of a white child in the same city. “It’s not an overstatement to say that the health care delivery system doesn’t consistently provide high-quality care. Or said another way, many people simply do not benefit from what medicine has to offer,” says William C. Richardson, PhD, chair of the committee that produced the Chasm report. Monetary expense is often cited as the primary barrier to equal care, perhaps in part because so many improvement initiatives focus on high-tech changes (information technology, computerization of processes, and the like). But very often, low-tech changes can do a lot to improve access and care. Many of the concepts and methods to improve access, patient flow, and care management can be successfully adapted to all patient care settings, even those with the fewest material resources.