Dartmouth Medicine Magazine :: Vital Signs : Facts & Figures

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- "The Road to Reform"
  With U.S. health-care costs at $2.4 trillion and rising, there is unprecedented urgency to the national debate about reforming the health-care system. Previous efforts to fix the country's current model have foundered on its complexity, but this time what's widely referred to as "the Dartmouth research" may make a difference. Here are perspectives first from a current leader of that research, and then from a slate of alumni-clinicians in various specialties from all across the country.
- "Hardy Stock"
  By Jennifer Durgin
  
  Aging well is often cast in physical terms—as an absence of disease or disability. But the psychological aspects of aging can be just as important, as two profiles reveal. That's a message that Dartmouth's one-year-old Centers for Health and Aging is helping to spread.
- "The Rest of the Story . . ."
  The 1982 Hitchcock annual report told a tale involving a toddler, a swimming pool, a near-drowning, and the specialists who restored the little boy to health. Now, more than 25 years later, one of his doctors reveals a crucial but unheralded role played by a crusty colleague.
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Vital Signs

Facts & Figures

The doctor is in (demand)

1.1 billion
Number of visits to U.S. doctors' offices, emergency rooms, and hospital outpatient departments in 2006

26%
Increase in the number of such visits between 1996 and 2006

11%
Increase in the U.S. population between 1996 and 2006

5 out of 10
Proportion of all visits to doctors' offices made by people with chronic medical conditions, such as arthritis or diabetes

7 out of 10
Proportion of all medical visits that resulted in at least one medication being provided, prescribed, or renewed

2.6 billion
Number of prescriptions written nationwide in 2006

478,337
Number of outpatient and emergency department visits at Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Lebanon, N.H., site in fiscal year 2006

1.2 million
Number of visits at Dartmouth-Hitchcock's other sites in FY06

123,624
Number of prescriptions filled at DHMC's outpatient pharmacy in FY06

SOURCES: CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION, DHMC

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