In the News

Doctors Don’t Actually Know How Often You Should See Them

Washington Post – Article references research conducted at Dartmouth, which suggests that the timing of follow-up visits to a doctor varies, and have tended to fall under the art, rather than the science, of medicine. The study found that patients tend to have more visits per year if they are sicker, but also if they live in an area with more doctors or with doctors who tend to ask patients to come in more often, even when adjusting for factors such as health status.

Sometimes Data Can Get You Only So Far

VT Digger – In this opinion piece, Paul Manganiello, emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology and current student at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel, discusses his internship experience working with a gun safety advocacy group in Vermont.

MTV generation faces a rude retirement wake-up call

MSN Money (via Main Street) – References the recent study on the state of Social Security by Samir Soneji, assistant professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel, and Harvard researchers, which forecasts that Social Security funds will be depleted by 2033. The article states that Generation X, whose ages range from 35 – 50 years old, may not benefit from the program.

Democrats Shouldn’t Endorse Suicide

Politico – An article by Ira Byock, emeritus professor of medicine and of community and family medicine, on the embrace of physician-assisted suicide by progressives as their political response to needless suffering of seriously ill people. Byock comments on the current state of the American hospice industry, and how two-thirds of America’s hospices now belong to for-profit companies, many traded on Wall Street.

Sell a disease to sell a drug

Washington Post – An opinion piece by Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz, both professors of medicine, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel, on how the Food and Drug Administration is pushing back against the over-prescribing of testosterone.