America’s Epidemic of Unnecessary Care
America’s Epidemic of Unnecessary Care
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/overkill-atul-gawande QT: Facing a doctor, what are you going to fear: doing too little or too much?
Annals of Health Care MAY 11, 2015 ISSUE
Overkill
An avalanche of unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially. What can we do about it?
BY ATUL GAWANDE
QT:{{”
Still, when it’s your turn to sit across from a doctor, in the white glare of a clinic, with your back aching, or your head throbbing, or a scan showing some small possible abnormality, what are you going to fear more—the prospect of doing too little or of doing too much?” …
“Right now, we’re so wildly over the boundary line in the other direction that it’s hard to see how we could accept leaving health care the way it is. Waste is not just consuming a third of health-care spending; it’s costing people’s lives. As long as a more thoughtful, more measured style of medicine keeps improving outcomes, change should be easy to cheer for. Still, when it’s your turn to sit across from a doctor, in the white glare of a clinic, with your back aching, or your head throbbing, or a scan showing some small possible abnormality, what are you going to fear more—the prospect of doing too little or of doing too much?”
“}}