[originaltext]W:(1)When you go to the doctor’s office for a checkup, how do you

W:(1)When you go to the doctor’s office for a checkup, how do you know that every procedure is actually necessary? Nearly three decades ago, the US Department of Health and Human Services created a panel to answer this very question: the Preventive Services Task Force. I spoke with Elliot Marshall about recent controversies involving the Task Force and some proposed changes in how they make assessments. Welcome, Eliot.
M: Thank you. There’s an interesting contrast between the way this group of experts sees themselves, and how they’re perceived as working by the public.(2)They deal with issues that affect public health, and everyone’s encountered the issues that they deal with when they go to the doctor. So it’s an interesting mix of politics and science.
W: So Eliot, what does the US need a Preventive Service Task Force for? What do they do?
M:(3)We spend a great deal of money on checking our health and trying to prevent disease and looking for early signs of disease. And it turns out, when you investigate it carefully, as they do, a lot of it is unnecessary. Not only is it unnecessary, but it’s also—it can be—detrimental. So it’s good to have somebody looking over these decisions that we make to see if we’re on a sound course, whether we’ve got evidence for the things that we do when we visit the doctor.
W: So how does this task force go about deciding what preventative measures to review? What do they use as their indicators?
M:(4)They take a very academic and very labor-intensive look at everything that’s been published on the subject, and they try to find the best evidence for whether a procedure that you may be invited to undergo by your doctor really has solid evidence supporting a conclusion that it will do some good—that is, they look for evidence of efficacy.
W: Does the task force take into consideration the costs that come into play when they’re advising on what things are effective?
M: Well, when I asked Virginia Moyer—the chair of the task force—this question, she said no.(5-1)I mean, they are explicitly told not to look at cost. And this is one of the points of controversy in their work. People think they do, but they do not. The main task of this group is to look at whether medical procedures work— whether screening procedures work. And they do consider the cost to a patient in an informal way, but not in the same way they consider other evidence.(5-2)So it’s something that sort of weighs in the balance, but they don’t investigate cost as a primary issue.
This is the end of Part One of the interview. Questions 1 to 5 are based on what you have just heard.
1. Why was the Preventive Services Task Force created?
2. What does the Preventive Services Task Force deal with?
3. What is the main duty of the Preventive Service Task Force?
4. How does the Preventive Services Task Force decide what preventative measures to review?
5. Which of the following is INCORRECT about the Preventive Service Task Force?