Exit Polling, Need for MRI Scans, Technology Transfer

How Exit Polling Works Guest: David Magleby, PhD, Professor of Political Science, BYU Tomorrow, news media will call the election long before all the ballots are counted. One reason they can do that with confidence is because of exit polls. Utah is considered by some to be a toss-up for the presidential race this time around, because independent Evan McMullin has drawn a fair amount of support. As a result, the Republican candidate isn’t a clear shoo-in to win Utah as has been the case in the past. So, you may actually hear the Utah Colleges Exit Poll cited on some national news outlets tomorrow night.  Did You Really Need that MRI? Guest: Daniel Wolfson, Executive Vice President and COO of American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation For the past decade in American medicine, there’s been a less-is-more movement pushing back against the idea that doctors and patients should pull out all stops, conduct all tests, do all interventions. Maybe you recall a New Yorker article in 2009 that got a lot of attention for highlighting a hospital in Texas called McAllen Medical Center that was found to have the highest health care costs per person in the entire country. The reason was not that the hospital’s patients were sicker than at other hospitals. It was that doctors at McAllen were ordering lots and lots of tests and treatments. But, their patients weren’t made any healthier, for the extra work.  In fact, part of this less-is-more push in medicine is the fact that sometimes extra tests and interventions actually do more harm to a patient. But how do you tell a doctor not to do something a patient wants adamantly? How do you convince a patient not to have a test or intervention when we’re conditioned to believe that, in health and medicine, more is the best approach? These are the goals of an ongoing campaign by the American Board of Internal Medicine called “Choosing Wisely.”  Racially-Segregated Preschools Guest: Erica Frankenberg, PhD, Associate Professor of Education and Demography, Pennsylvania St