Edited version from our managment improvement blog.
What’s Making Us Sick Is an Epidemic of Diagnoses by Dr. Welch, Dr. Schwartz and Dr. Woloshin:
For most Americans, the biggest health threat is not avian flu, West Nile or mad cow disease. It’s our health-care system.
True, and probably the biggest economic threat too.
But it also leads to more diagnoses, a trend that has become an epidemic.
This epidemic is a threat to your health. It has two distinct sources. One is the medicalization of everyday life. Most of us experience physical or emotional sensations we don’t like, and in the past, this was considered a part of life. Increasingly, however, such sensations are considered symptoms of disease.
When I read:
But the real problem with the epidemic of diagnoses is that it leads to an epidemic of treatments. Not all treatments have important benefits, but almost all can have harms.
I just think: tampering!
Related: blog posts on healthcare improvement and articles on healthcare improvement - Going Lean in Health Care - Health Care Crisis
October 28th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
My guess is that traveling for health care is going to increase greatly in the future. Health costs in the USA are enormous…