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"Making People Sick In the Pursuit Of Health"

Testing often and diagnosing early leads to lives saved and lower costs, right?   Maybe not, say  Dartmouth researchers and physicians H. Gilbert Welch, Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin, authors of "Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health,"

It's a provocative thesis for every woman considering her next mammogram or man his next PSA test.  Will the test find disease?   More importantly, will it find disease that would have caused harm if left undiscovered and untreated?

The answers are not as obviously in favor of testing as we've been led to believe.  And anybody relying on more testing to save money has not done the math (as hospitals morphing into ACOs will conclude once they're managing clinical and financial risk for a defined population.)

(Thanks to the Chicago Tribune for the heads-up.)


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