Tracking Medicine: A Researcher's Quest to Understand Health Care Hardcover – August 26, 2010
Author: Visit Amazon's John E. Wennberg Page | Language: English | ISBN: 0199731780 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Tracking Medicine: A Researcher's Quest to Understand Health Care – August 26, 2010
Download for free books Tracking Medicine: A Researcher's Quest to Understand Health Care Hardcover – August 26, 2010 for everyone book 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
"There are many books on healthcare reform, health delivery, or systems research, but none that combine the science with practical experience like this one does." --Doody's
"The cost crisis now facing the US health care system urgently calls for more effective control than the new legislation provides. That is why a new book by Dr. John E. Wennberg, Tracking Medicine, is so important and timely." --The New York Review of Books
"Tracking Medicine should be required reading for all health care professionals, and indeed for all who are intrested in truly reforming health care... Highly recommended." --Choice
"The title of this book hints at a personal history:'researcher's quest . . .' Yet, John Wennberg has been the dominant force over several decades in studies to describe and understand American medicine. Thus, this personal narrative is also an excellent summary of our current understanding of US health care." -- American Journal of Epidemiology
John E. Wennberg, MD, MPH, is Peggy Y. Thomson Professor (Chair) in the Evaluative Clinical Sciences, and Founder and Director Emeritus of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.
Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Tracking Medicine: A Researcher's Quest to Understand Health Care Hardcover – August 26, 2010
Download for free books Tracking Medicine: A Researcher's Quest to Understand Health Care Hardcover – August 26, 2010 for everyone book 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
Review
"There are many books on healthcare reform, health delivery, or systems research, but none that combine the science with practical experience like this one does." --Doody's
"The cost crisis now facing the US health care system urgently calls for more effective control than the new legislation provides. That is why a new book by Dr. John E. Wennberg, Tracking Medicine, is so important and timely." --The New York Review of Books
"Tracking Medicine should be required reading for all health care professionals, and indeed for all who are intrested in truly reforming health care... Highly recommended." --Choice
"The title of this book hints at a personal history:'researcher's quest . . .' Yet, John Wennberg has been the dominant force over several decades in studies to describe and understand American medicine. Thus, this personal narrative is also an excellent summary of our current understanding of US health care." -- American Journal of Epidemiology
About the Author
John E. Wennberg, MD, MPH, is Peggy Y. Thomson Professor (Chair) in the Evaluative Clinical Sciences, and Founder and Director Emeritus of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.
Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Tracking Medicine: A Researcher's Quest to Understand Health Care Hardcover – August 26, 2010
- Hardcover: 344 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (August 26, 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0199731780
- ISBN-13: 978-0199731787
- Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #325,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #67 in Books > Textbooks > Medicine & Health Sciences > Administration & Policy > Health Policy
- #96 in Books > Medical Books > Administration & Medicine Economics > Health Care Administration
Read this book too (along with Overtreated) if you want to understand what has gone wrong with American Medicine.
It always a pleasure to hear a brilliant scientist explain his work. But it is also a revelation to hear such a figure explain how he worked his way through the data with a good deal of self observation, willingness to acknowledge mis-steps and point-by-point response to those who try to provide alternative explanations to his results. Wennberg explains the studies done by the Dartmouth Health Atlas Project, how they altered his original beliefs and gradually caused him to recognize the omnipresence of self-delusion in much of the
medical-industrial complex.
Wennberg's original mission was to examine practices across the state of Vermont to make sure that rural areas were receiving the same "excellent" care as those living near academic medical centers. Looking for underserved populations, he developed a map of regions served by various medical centers and began looking at the frequency of various procedures corrected for population size. In one town, 60% of the children had had their tonsils removed by age 15, while in the next town over only 20% of the kids were tonsils free. The odds that a women had had a hysterectomy varied fourfold from region to region. Hospitalization for digestive diseases varied two fold, and for respiratory ailments, threefold. Given the relative homogeneity of the population, these differences in practice patterns made no sense. And death rates, and average age at death, were indistinquishable across regions. Rather than justifying his original concern over undertreatment, Wennberg's data made a strong case for overutilization of dubiously effective procedures favored in the local community.
Book Review
John Wennberg's book, Tracking Medicine, a researcher's quest to understand health care, challenges anyone interested in health information technology or the Affordable Health Care Act to a `must read.` Wenneberg spent 40 years applying statistical analysis to the care given in various U.S. locations. Wennberg discovered an extreme variation in the manner and quantity of medical services rendered. He applied the science of epidemiology and statistics to understand these differences. What he found was a fundamental contradiction in the patterns of medical practice. These contradictions surprise and shock the medical establishment and others who believed that for healthcare more is better.
Patient satisfaction, outcome and longevity -- even in some teaching centers - proved inversely related to the intensity of medical, surgical and hospital services. Furthermore, Wennberg found that the greater the capacity of the facility and number of specialists per capita, the greater the intensity of care. Intriguingly, he found that providers were completely unaware of this variation. Present day Certificates of Need, required for expanding the number of hospital beds -- and in large measure many other provisions in the Affordable Health Care Act - indeed reflect much of Wennberg's research.
Wennberg together with the Dartmouth Institute of Health Policy and Clinical Practice proposed four policies to improve clinical medicine and quality. They suggested:
1. Organized local systems
2. Decreasing overtreatment by shared decision making between patient and doctor
3. Strengthening the science of health care delivery
4.
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