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To Screen or Not to Screen? (Diana Mahoney, 11/02/11, Family Practice News)

Pegged by some in the health care industry as a potentially dangerous renegade in the months since the January 2011 publication of his book, coauthored by colleagues Dr. Lisa M. Schwartz and Dr. Steven Woloshin, Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health (Boston: Beacon: 2011), Dr. Welch is unapologetic for his assertion that the chief benefactors of early screening protocols are device manufacturers, imaging centers, pharmaceutical companies and even local hospitals. Screening, he said, is a recruiting tool. It doesn't necessarily lead to better patient care, but it does generate "new" patients, including those with no signs and symptoms of disease who would otherwise believe themselves to be healthy and those who turn into patients overnight by virtue of a threshold change, such as a reduction in fasting blood sugar values indicating prediabetes or an alteration in osteoporosis criteria, he said. [...]

Dr. Welch maintains that he is not anti-health care or anti-medicine or anti-screening, per se. "I am against treating people who are well," he said.

Posted by oj at November 6, 2011 7:51 AM
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