MammographyWhy the government cannot fix it under construction Consider mammograms. No one keeps data on how successfully doctors diagnose cancer. Many of them lack the ability to discern the shadows and swirls in a mammogram that indicate cancer. But no one knows who can do it and who cannot. No one checks. No one is counting. Even the doctors themselves do not know how they are doing. Patients are shooting dice when getting mammograms hoping to luck into doctors capable of doing the job. In a country where batting averages and pitching speeds are known to the fourth decimal place, there is no data on which doctors accurately detect cancer and which don't. If baseball were run that way, I could be pinch hitting for Ken Griffey, Jr. Studies in North Carolina and New Hampshire found that some clinics miss 40% of tumors. In New York a radiologist in the Bronx was found to have missed 25 tumors while finding only 7 in two years. No one knows how the rest of the clinics in America are doing. No one keeps track. The federal government was alarmed and wanted to weed out doctors whose track records at discovering cancer were worse than bad luck. Doctors and their allies derailed it. Now the government monitors mammography equipment instead. Inept doctors reviewing x-rays earn hundreds of thousands per year without anyone knowing which doctors detect cancer and which don't. (New York Times, June 27, 2002) |
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