Read article – Features a new study conducted by researchers at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, which examined whether or not doctors’ actions are influenced by an interest in controlling health care costs. The researchers surveyed clinicians at Atrius Health, Massachusetts’ largest outpatient care provider, to determine what drives physicians to order tests they don’t think are in a patient’s best interest, and whether doctors were interested in controlling costs. The researchers found a big gap between physicians’ desire to limit costly and low-value care, and their ability to do so.

Listen to story – As a guest on “Northland Morning,” Shawn O’Leary, an Urban Health Scholars Advisor and a member of the Boise Forte Band of Ojibwe, discusses his innovative idea to start a spring break service project that brings first-year medical and public health students to work with Native American communities in Minnesota.

Read article – Ellen Flaherty, instructor in medicine and co-director of Dartmouth Centers for Health & Aging, will become president of the American Geriatrics Society at the start of its annual scientific meeting this week in California. Flaherty is a co-principal investigator of the geriatrics workforce enhancement program at Dartmouth and the coordinating center administered by the American Geriatrics Society that provides resources to geriatrics workforce enhancement programs across the country.

Read article – Quotes Steven Woloshin, professor of medicine, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, about what it means when the FDA designates an experimental approach with “breakthrough status.” “When you hear the word breakthrough, it’s understandable to think that it means something definitively or a game changer,” says Woloshin. “But it gets confusing because the FDA uses it in a very different way.”

Read article – Quotes H. Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, about how getting your own blood tests is part of the larger negative trend—testing people who aren’t really sick. The article also quotes Norman Paradis, professor of medicine, who calls the model of offering a wide assortment of tests a recipe for disaster.

Read article – Steven Woloshin, professor of medicine, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, is quoted about how press releases, popular media, and even some journal articles routinely inflate expectations for future therapies based on early findings that probably will never turn into cures. “This is a problem throughout medical research and reporting on medical research,” says Woloshin.