Excerpt from: NPR (click for full article)
Attention medical students: When selecting your residency program, there's more than just geography and the hospital's reputation to consider.
The nation's 23 top academic medical centers also vary quite a bit in what researchers say is the intensity of care they provide patients at the end of life, according to an analysis from the Dartmouth Atlas Project.
More intense care can translate into worse, and more expensive, care at the end of life, according to the authors. So, the thinking goes, physicians who train at hospitals with better and more efficient care will be in better shape to become leaders in changing how health care is delivered.
The authors of the report call it the "hidden training curriculum."
The Dartmouth Atlas has been researching disparities in care using Medicare data to analyze trends about regional and local markets, but this is the first time the researchers have applied the findings to residency training. Dartmouth is working to get the word out to student medical groups and publications in the hopes that the report will help medical students make informed decisions when selecting their residency program.
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