The Real Danger of Medical Referrals: Physician Overconfidence + Lack of Quality Assessment

A propos of my earlier post, Ezra Klein writes to complain that I have erroneously grouped him in with Nick Kristoff.  I should be clear that Kristof's estimates on their own suggest that the death rate should drop by 20% or so over the next ten years; Ezra's estimates are just gravy.

In her hospital bed recovering from a hysterectomy, one of the first things a 40-year-old patient told her husband was that an anesthesiologist had forced her to perform oral sex, a Superior Court judge heard Wednesday. Testifying at the sexual assault trial of Toronto anesthesiologist George Doodnaught, the victim’s husband recalled details of their conversation in February 2010, just hours after his wife’s surgery.

I'm still digesting exactly what this means for health care policy, but if the growth in health care costs is being "driven by the number of treated enrollees as opposed to the cost of treatment," is that a problem?:

Playing video games on the Nintendo Wii can help surgeons improve hand-eye coordination and should be used to enhance their training, according to a new study. A group of postgraduate surgeons at the University of Rome were put on a month-long programme of gaming using the Nintendo’s Wii console.

Medical schools across Canada are training far too many doctors for some pediatric specialities — but failing to produce enough in other key areas of child health care, concludes a new study that starkly illustrates the surprising disconnect between physician education and real-world demands.

The suit filed by the California Medical Assn. and others against Aetna is part of a growing legal battle over what patients are charged when they go outside a health insurer's network.The California Medical Assn., the largest physician group in the state, and more than 60 individual doctors sued health insurance giant Aetna Inc.

ETF Database submits: As equity markets continue to tread water, many investors who haven’t fled for safe havens such as Treasuries and gold have turned to more defensive sectors of the U.S. equity market. Despite this flight to quality, ETFs in the Health and Biotechnology ETFdb Category have slumped so far in 2010, with most falling by more than 5% on the year.