Dallas Morning News – Quotes Jonathan Skinner, professor of community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel, and professor of economics at Dartmouth, on a recent study that revealed it is common practice at Texas General and two other for-profit medical centers in North Texas to charge patients upward of nine times the cost of care. While insurance companies and federal health care programs arrange lower prices with hospitals, the uninsured don’t have the same negotiating power and are often left with hefty bills.
In the News
Pioneer ACOs: Anatomy Of A ‘Victory’
Health Affairs Blog – References a policy objective for ACOs proposed in Health Affairs in 2007 by Elliott Fisher, director and professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and professor of medicine, and community and family medicine, and colleagues from Dartmouth. The policy objective focused on reducing variation in Medicare shared savings rather than containing costs.
Optical Method Maps Brain Tumor Borders
Chemical & Engineering News – References comments made by David Roberts, professor of surgery and neurology, on a new optical coherence tomography (OCT) device that surgeons could potentially use to help remove tumors from the brain.
New Drugs Might Prevent Migraines Before They Start
U.S. News & World Report via Health Day News – Quotes Thomas Ward, professor of neurology, on recent research that is closing in on a new class of drugs that can prevent chronic migraines by interrupting the chain of events thought to create the headaches. “It’s very exciting, because this would be a form of prevention that might not have a lot of side effects and would be highly effective for people who have not had good treatment,” says Ward. “The hope is these drugs will be clean, reduce the number of headaches people get, and won’t carry a lot of baggage.”
Dartmouth Gets Grant to Lead Study on Hospitals
Valley News – Dartmouth will receive $17.5 million over five years from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to study how well, and how quickly, hospitals learn from their successes. Elliott Fisher, director and professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel, will lead the work of nine researchers from Geisel joined by others from Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, Intermountain Health Care in Salt Lake City and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Ticks Are Now Widespread in Vermont, and Half Carry Lyme
VPR – Quotes Jeffrey Parsonnet, professor of medicine, on the high incidence of Lyme disease in ticks found in Vermont. “It has to do with environment and exposure to ticks,” says Parsonnet. “There’s not a lot of Lyme disease in Manhattan. But when people are living in rural areas, as we are, and as the tick and the infected ticks become more prevalent, that’s a setup for a high incidence of Lyme.”
Balancing Goals in The MSSP: Consider Variable Savings Rates
Health Affairs Blog – A blog post written by Carrie Colla, assistant professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel; Elliott Fisher, director and professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel; Scott Heiser, policy analyst; and Emily Tierny, health policy fellow. In the post, they examine the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ recent changes to the Medicare Shared Savings Program, and accountable care organization’s (ACO) concerns about how the financial targets, which determine whether an ACO is successful at saving or guilty of overspending, are determined under the new requirements.
How Apple and Google Are Going to Help Cure Humanity’s Diseases
Huffington Post – Quotes Lisa Schwartz, professor of medicine, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Geisel, on Apple’s new open-platform medical research tool ResearchKit.
Is It Low-T? No It’s Big Pharma Peddling a Nonexistent Disease
Valley News via Washington Post – Continued coverage of 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.
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.