Tag Archives: Dartmouth Atlas

The Dartmouth Atlas Project has released the first four of nine regional reports looking at the variation in elective surgery rates for 306 hospital referral regions across the U.S. The report shows that whether Medicare patients undergo elective surgery depends largely on where they live and the providers they see. Authors found that for many conditions, especially those where elective surgery is an option, the treatment a patient receives depends more on the physician’s recommendations than the patient’s preferences. Continue reading →

This report addresses a deceptively simple question: How can the productivity of American health care be substantially improved? Productivity, in lay terms, is the ratio of output to inputs. A more colloquial rendition of the question might be: how can we get a lot more bang for our heath care buck? Continue reading →