All Articles

• ‘Choosing Wisely’ initiative may be a tipping point for costs and ethics

  Health professionals and their leaders have a moral duty to ensure their patients’ safety, personally and through system improvement.
• Team care of chronic diseases seems cost-effective

  The collaborative TEAMcare program for people with depression and either diabetes, heart disease, or both appears at least to pay for itself, according to a UW Medicine and Group Health Research Institute report in the May 7 Archives of General Psychiatry. Over two years, after accounting for the $1,224 per patient that the program cost, it may save as much as $594 per patient in outpatient costs.
• Opioid-prescribing safety: Finding real-world solutions for a nationwide epidemic

  Fatal overdoses involving prescribed opioids quadrupled from 1999 to 2009, climbing to almost 16,000 U.S. deaths annually—more than cocaine and heroin overdoses combined. What wasn’t clear was how to combat this growing threat.
• Breast cancer screening: A trio of innovators shines light on the evidence women need

  Serious questions remain about how best to balance screening’s benefits with its potential harms, including false-positive test results, overdiagnosis leading to invasive treatment for non-life-threatening conditions, and repeated exposure to radiation.
• Risk factors may inform breast cancer screening

  hoosing when to start regular breast cancer screening is a complicated decision for individual women and their providers. For most women, increasing age is the biggest risk factor for breast cancer, which is much more common at age 60 than at 40. But two new articles on other risk factors may inform guidelines and clinical practice about screening mammography from age 40 to 49.
• Naturopathic care can improve blood sugar, mood in diabetes

  A new joint study by Group Health Research Institute and Bastyr University Research Institute found that type 2 diabetes patients who received naturopathic care (as an adjunct to conventional care) had lower blood-sugar levels, better eating and exercise habits, improved moods, and a stronger sense of control over their condition than did patients receiving only conventional care.
• Problems in cancer care are not uncommon

  Cancer care is increasingly complex, and as many as one in five cancer patients may experience “breakdowns” in their care, according to a new study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Such breakdowns include communication problems between patients and their care providers, as well as more traditional medical errors; both types of problems can create significant harms. In the study, communication problems outnumbered problems with medical care.