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Vital Signs
Media Mentions: DMS & DHMC In The News
Among the people and programs coming in for
prominent media coverage in recent months
was a Dartmouth pediatrician who studies physician
workforce issues. "A large supply of doctors
does not necessarily improve the health of a population,
. . . Dr. David Goodman of Dartmouth Medical
School" told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in
an article about a projected physician shortage in
Georgia. A popular public radio show also tapped
Goodman's expertise in reporting
on the Association of American
Medical Colleges' call to
train more doctors. In "places
where there are a lot more
physicians," Goodman was
quoted as saying on Marketplace,
"the costs are much higher."
And in an op-ed essay published in the New York
Times, Goodman said that "the most serious problem
facing our health-care system . . . cannot be
solved by more doctors. In fact, that approach,
like prescribing more drugs for an already overmedicated
patient, may only make things worse."
A New York Times "Quotation of the Day" may
be even more high-profile than a Times op-ed essay,
but it's a media coup one can't lobby for—it
just comes like manna to the especially silvertongued.
On September 8, the honor fell to "Dr.
James Bernat, a professor of neurology at Dartmouth
Medical School." Asked about a British woman in
a vegetative state who had shown signs of consciousness
on a brain-imaging
test, he said: "Even though we
might assume some patients are
not aware, I think we should always
talk to them, always explain
what's going on, always
make them comfortable, because
maybe they are there, inside,
aware of everything." The Washington Post
was among a number of other media outlets that
asked Bernat to comment on the case.
When a biotech company announced it had devised a way to extract embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryo, reporters from all over phoned a DMS adjunct professor of community and family medicine. "'This technique overcomes this hurdle . . . ,' Ronald Green, director of Dartmouth College's Ethics Institute and chairman of [the company's] ethics advisory board" told Agence France Presse. And the Washington Post reported as follows: "'We're speaking here of an enormous breakthrough in American medicine,' said Green, who said his only financial link to the company was the approximately $200 per day he was paid—more than a year ago—for attending a handful of meetings to review the research."
In a recent feature about treating back pain, Fortune
magazine consulted "a surgeon and researcher
at Dartmouth, Dr. James Weinstein, who is leading the
biggest-ever U.S. study of back
surgery." Weinstein, chair of orthopaedic
surgery, is "trying to
make sense of all [the] competing
treatments and theories" on
back pain in "a massive six-year,
$13.5-million study . . . dubbed
SPORT (Spine Patient Outcomes
Research Trial)." The trial, Fortune said,
"seeks to answer the most vexing question in back
pain treatment: To cut, or not to cut?"
"Pediatricians usually ask a mother about
her
baby's sleep pattern or a toddler's eating habits,"
began a recent Boston Globe article.
"But a study published today
suggests . . . they should ask
a few questions about the mother's
own well-being, too." The
study, published in Pediatrics,
was led by "Dartmouth professor
. . . Dr. Ardis Olson," noted the
Globe. Pediatricians already "provide advice in a
wide array of areas," Olson was quoted as saying.
Asking two additional, simple questions "can
quickly and easily start the process of getting [depressed
mothers] the help they need."
"Consumers are finally getting some of the tools they need to comparison-shop for health care," the Wall Street Journal recently reported. The Journal cited three organizations that have "the latest tools," including "Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire, [which has] posted online the charges for 75 of its most common medical services." For more about DHMC's price transparency and cost estimator initiatives, see the article "Price check in radiology room three".
Over the summer, the Chicago Tribune reported
on the results of a Dartmouth-led
study of thyroid cancer. "The apparent surge
of thyroid cancer is the result
of better, high-tech diagnostic
tests that are
picking up minuscule tumors,
most of which pose
no long-term threat," the
Tribune noted. "'New tests
are available to detect abnormalities
we never saw in the past,' . . .
the co-author of the [study], Dr. Louise Davies,
an assistant professor of surgery at Dartmouth
Medical School," explained.
Washington Post health columnist Abigail
Trafford wrote recently about how often depression
and other mental
illnesses in the elderly are
dismissed as a normal part
of aging. "Ugly ageism
translates into bad medicine,"
Trafford wrote. She
went on to quote a Dartmouth
professor of psychiatry:
"'To feel down and have a sense of loss
is normal,' says psychiatrist Stephen Bartels,
M.D., of the New Hampshire-Dartmouth
Psychiatric Research Center. 'To be depressed
over a period of time is not normal.'"
National Public Radio (NPR) reported over
the summer on a former Army private with
antisocial personality disorder
who pleaded not
guilty to raping and killing
an Iraqi girl and murdering
her family. For insight
into the disorder, NPR's
All Things Considered interviewed
Dr. "Kim Mueser, a
psychologist at Dartmouth Medical School."
People with the disorder may appear rational,
but "they don't seem to care about other
people," Mueser said. "Classic symptoms
. . . include aggression to other people and
animals, including, for example, cruelty to
animals [and] initiating fights. . . . There's
no agreed-upon treatment approach for
[these] people," he added.
Among the guests on NPR's Talk of the Nation for a discussion about where to find help for mental illness was "Dr. Allen Dietrich, a practicing primary-care physician and professor of community
and family
medicine at Dartmouth
Medical School." When
asked about the ability of
family doctors to keep up
with the latest pharmaceutical
treatments for mental
illness, Dietrich replied, "I
think a primary-care physician may actually
be in a position to have a protective role.
When I was in training, one of the things I
learned was to not be the first doctor on my
block to prescribe a new medication."
The results of a Dartmouth study of physician
satisfaction caught the attention of the
Dallas Morning News, California's Contra
Costa Times, and the Chicago Tribune. Primary-care doctors in areas with the most
medical resources "are unhappier with the
quality of care they provide than those
working elsewhere," the Tribune reported.
"'Doctors are less satisfied,
and they perceive the resources
to be scarcer, even
when they have more,'
said the study's senior author,
Dr. Elliott Fisher of Dartmouth
Medical School.
. . . 'Demand feeds supply,
feeds demand, feeds supply in sort of a
never-ending cycle,' [noted] lead author
Dr. Brenda Sirovich," pictured above.
"Want to cut down on absenteeism by workers?" Kiplinger Business Forecasts asked readers. "Pay for their kids' flu shots. Employers often provide flu shots to their employees in hopes of staving off sick leave, only to have healthy workers stuck at home caring for sick children. 'There's a definite correlation between kids sick due to flu and worker absentee rates,' says Dr. Henry Bernstein of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. 'Parents either are home taking care of kids, or home having caught the flu from their kids."
Dozens of regional and national media, including
Business Week, continue to feature
two DMS researchers who have repeatedly
shown that "getting more medical care, and
paying more for it, can actually make your
health worse. . . . 'The problem is not underuse
in low-rate regions
and hospitals, but overuse
and inefficiency in highrate
regions,' concludes Dr.
John Wennberg [pictured], professor
of medicine and director
of Dartmouth's Center
for the Evaluative Clinical
Sciences." And in the Wall Street Journal,
Wennberg's collaborator Dr. Elliott Fisher
added, "We see there are huge differences in
practice patterns across hospitals in the U.S.
and even across medical centers."
This fall, the Associated Press, dozens of TV stations, Fox News, and many other media outlets reported on an offer by attorneys general from more than 35 states to provide antismoking public-service announcements free of charge to movie studios. And all of them cited DMS research. "A 2005 study released by Dartmouth Medical School," AP noted, for example, "found 38 of every 100 youths who tried smoking did so because of their exposure to smoking in movies." The Motion Picture Association of America said "it was too early to comment on whether studios would accept the offer to use the public-service announcements." For word on the latest smoking-and-the-movies study by Dr. James Sargent's team, see the article "Some movie smoking is still rising".
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