It was lunchtime before my afternoon surgery clinic, which meant that I was at my desk, eating a ham-and-cheese sandwich and clicking through medical articles. Among those which caught my eye: a British case report on the first 3-D-printed hip implanted in a human being, a Canadian analysis of the rising volume of emergency-room visits by children who have ingested magnets, and a Colorado study finding that the percentage of fatal motor-vehicle accidents involving marijuana had doubled since its commercial distribution became legal. The one that got me thinking, however, was a study of more than a million Medicare patients. It suggested that a huge proportion had received care that was simply a waste.
The researchers called it “low-value care.” But, really, it was no-value care. They studied how often people received one of twenty-six tests or treatments that scientific and professional organizations have consistently determined to have no benefit or to be outright harmful.
So begins Dr. Atul Gawande’s recent essay in The New Yorker, which I have chosen as this week’s Reading.
It asks a simple question: what can we do about this?
Dr. Gawande, a general surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is a prolific writer; he is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and has penned several bestselling books, including Being Mortal and The Checklist Manifesto.
In this piece, Dr. Gawande focuses on overtreatment. Indeed, the title is a good summary: “Overkill.” Continue reading
Recent Comments