Medicine Worth Paying for

Medical technology assessment is the discipline that studies what does and does not work in medicine. Howard Frazier and Frederick Mosteller are leading figures in this field. In "Medicine Worth Paying For" they attempt to distill the methods and knowledge base of their highly specialized discipline into a text that is accessible to a nontechnical audience. This book calls attention to the importance of technology assessment in medicine - the rigorous evaluation of the effects of medical treatments - with particular reference to medical innovations. Also, making use of a series of carefully selected cases, the authors identify important policy implications that can be drawn from the study of successful medical innovations. These cases of medical successes are a source of examples of the effects, good and bad, of the application of technology to health care and of attempts to influence the diffusion of technologies in health care. "Medicine Worth Paying For" should be of interest to a variety of readers, particularly those concerned with health policy, investigators studying health services, those in health professions, nonprofessionals who wish to maintain and improve the performance of the health care system, and others who simply want a system that provides benefits greater than risks at an acceptable financial cost.