Book Club

A study found that one third of people who were told they needed heart bypass surgery did not need it. Tens of thousands of Americans have back surgery for pain when there is no evidence to support it; studies have found that pain management and therapy are more effective. The 70 million CT scans performed…

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape our Decisions, spoke at Wednesday’s Donaghue Foundation annual meeting in Farmington. How choices are framed has a lot to do with how we respond. For example, a group of people were asked to name either 3 or 10 reasons they love their significant other.…

I had already ordered her book online after reading a review in Health Affairs when I got an invitation to hear Rosemary Gibson, author of the Treatment Trap: How the Overuse of Medical Care is Wrecking Your Health and What You Can Do to Prevent It. Her visit yesterday was hosted by AARP-CT and the…

I usually avoid reading about other countries’ health systems; it’s depressing how backward America is about health care. It is odd that the best way to motivate policymakers to do something is to suggest that other states have done the thing and that we are behind, but the worst way to move them is to…

Who knew that economics, microeconomics at that, could be entertaining? Super Freakonomics, our newest Book Club addtion, includes more examples of why everything, even things that don’t seem it, involves competing incentives and how to find simple, cheap solutions by thinking about things differently including information technology and ER overcrowding, measuring the skill of doctors,…

Silence Kills: Speaking Out and Saving Lives (Edited by Lee Gutkind, 2007) is a collection of essays describing real life stories from providers and victims about their experiences with medical errors. Providers’ descriptions of pain, guilt, shame, and fear for their future are compelling. Victims’ stories include indifferent and careless providers and a stupid system…

According to the Environment Protection Agency, a human life is worth $6.1 million. That estimate came out of cost-benefit analyses of arsenic from drinking water. Priceless, by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling (2004), provides a fascinating look at the assumptions and questionable methodologies used to develop cost benefit analyses across fields. The costs of arsenic…

I just finished Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori and Rom Brafman. A fascinating book that details the psychological forces that keep us from making good decisions. There are dozens of great examples, but my favorite is the “twenty dollar auction”. One the first day of class, a Harvard business school professor…