Read article – Quotes H. Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, about recent research conducted by the Washington Health Alliance that examined waste in spending in healthcare. Welch notes that the findings come back to “Economics 101.” The medical system is still dominated by a payment system that pays providers for doing tests and procedures. “Incentives matter,” says Welch. “As long as people are paid more to do more they will tend to do too much.”

Read article – Quotes Elliott Fisher, director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and professor of medicine and of community and family medicine, about Amazon, JP Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway’s announcement that they are teaming up to form a new health insurance company for their employees in the United States.

Read article – Cites a study conducted by researchers from Geisel School of Medicine, the University of Michigan School of Nursing, and the Veteran Affairs Medical Center in White River, Vt., that found that there were no evidence to prove the direct relationship between apple consumption and physician visits. However, researchers did find that some of the study subjects used fewer prescription medications.

Read article – Features an interview with Julianna Czum, assistant professor of radiology and of medicine, in which she discusses the impact of social media and how to differentiate a good blog post from a bad one.

Read article – Quotes Richard Barth, professor of surgery, about how he and his colleagues came up with guidelines for prescribing opioids for five different surgical procedures, and after educating residents, nurses and other physicians on the guidelines, saw opioid prescriptions dropped by 53 percent four months later. “I’m just trying to do my part as a physician to responsibly prescribe opioids,” says Barth. “I think if you do that, then fewer people are going to become longtime opioid users. It’s those people that go back to their family practitioners and keep demanding more opioids.”

Read article – Quotes James Bernat, the Louis and Ruth Frank Professor of Neuroscience and active emeritus professor of neurology and medicine, in an article that examines the definition of brain death. The article mentions that Bernat helped develop the theory of brain death that formed the basis of the 1981 President’s Commission report.

Read article – Quotes Daisy Goodman, clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, community and family medicine, and adjunct assistant professor of the Dartmouth Institute, in an article about how new mothers struggling with addiction get little attention. “We take intensive care of women during pregnancy. Postpartum, we drop them like a hot potato,” says Goodman.

Read article – Continued coverage of comments by Lisa Marsch, director of the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health and professor of psychiatry and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, about research she led examining why New Hampshire’s opioid problem is so dire.

Read article – An opinion piece that comments on a New York Times story about one family’s struggle with addiction, and cites the work of researchers at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine in helping to explain why New Hampshire’s opioid problem is so dire. The Granite State ranks second behind West Virginia in opioid deaths – nearly 500 people died from overdoses in 2015 and 2016 – and first in the nation in deaths due to fentanyl.

Read article – Quotes H. Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, from an opinion piece previously published in The New York Times, which discussed the stricter guidelines from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology.