Video Teaser for Lown Presents: Hospital Cooperation
Watch and share this video sneak peek of what Shannon, Vikas, and our guests will be talking about at Lown Presents: The Promise of Hospital Cooperation on January 27th. More
Is overdiagnosis behind the increase in melanoma cases?
Is the tremendous increase in melanoma diagnoses a cancer epidemic, or an "epidemic of overdiagnosis"? More
Why we need to ask more than, “Does this treatment work?”
In a perspective piece in the Washington Post, Dr. Daniel Morgan, explains why shared decision making requires us to ask, "How likely is this treatment to work?" and why the answer to that question can be tricky. More
Shkreli Awards: “Dishonorable Mentions”
In case you missed it, the 2020 Shkreli Award winners, the top ten examples of profiteering and dysfunction in health care, were released earlier this month. But what about nominations that didn't make the top ten? More
Why you can’t buy your way to better health
Do the most privileged Americans get the best care in the world? A new study has some surprising results... More
VIDEO: 2020 Shkreli Awards countdown!
If you missed the live Shkreli Awards countdown on January 5th, don't fret! You can watch the full recording below. More
“I feel like my health is deteriorating with hers”: The struggles of caregiving and what clinicians need to know
Most Americans want to die at home, but we're not giving family caregivers the support they need to manage end-of-life care for their loved ones. More
Assessing Medicare’s value-based payment experiment
What's going well and what isn't when it comes to value-based payment experiments in Medicare. More
Evaluating harms and benefits of surgery for frail older adults
In the latest edition of the “Right Care Series” in the journal American Family Physician, Dr. Ann Lindsay from the Stanford University School of Medicine, and patient partners Helen Haskell and John James tackle the subject of evaluating older adults for frailty before recommending elective surgery. More
Change is how we show health care workers real support
The best way hospital leaders can show health care workers support is to commit to changing the broken health care system, now and after Covid-19. More
The Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine: Good news and what we still don’t know
Ever since the initial press release from Pfizer came out, the medical community has been waiting for more detailed results to better analyze the vaccine's effectiveness and safety. Here's what the briefing document shows. More
VIDEO: An introduction to community benefits
What types of spending count as community benefits, and which types of hospitals spend the most? Shannon and Vikas tackle these questions and more on this week's Lown Hospitals Q&A. More
Can for-profit hospitals be anchor institutions?
How do nonprofit and for-profit hospitals differ when it comes to community engagement and community health investment? More
When evidence becomes politicized, how do we talk about low-value care?
When we call unproven treatments "cures," we not only put patients at risk of harm, we create a framework in which evidence is no longer valued. Kelsey Chalmers and Judith Garber explore how this perspective could impact the "less is more" movement, and how we need to reframe the issue to build a coalition for change. More
Medicare spending and low-value care: Lessons from the Dartmouth Atlas and Lown Hospitals Index
To what extent does high Medicare spending reflect more hospital utilization of low-value care? Can low-value care within certain regions be attributed to individual hospitals? We compared data from the Dartmouth Atlas and the Lown Hospitals Index, to gain insight into these questions. More
Closing the maternal mortality gap
What makes the US so different from other wealthy countries when it comes to maternal health? More
Could telehealth increase inappropriate prescribing?
The Covid-19 pandemic has ushered in the era of telehealth. But are there unintended consequences for overprescribing? More
Hospital charges are out of control. Will transparency help?
A new report shows that the ratio of hospital charges compared to their costs has ballooned over the past decades. Why does it matter? More
The cardiac implant you get may depend on the company paying your doctor
Does receiving money from medical device companies impact the devices doctors implant in patients? A recent study in JAMA suggests that it does. More
Video: Measuring patient satisfaction in hospitals
How can we measure the ways in which hospital environments promote healing? And what do we find on the Lown Index when it comes to patient satisfaction? Shannon Brownlee and Dr. Vikas Saini tackle these questions and more in this week's video. More