Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
That is the title of a recent study I published with Michael Halasy in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The subtitle is Establishing a Theoretical Model to Evaluate the Value of Second Opinion Visits. The abstract is below: In order to produce a mathematical model for better understanding of the benefits and utilization of second opinions and…
Quality of care is difficult to measure. Even if you had a perfect measure of quality in terms of health outcomes, risk adjustment is imperfect. For instance, academic medical centers are often assumed to have high quality, but actual outcomes observed in the data may not be that good if they also receive the sickest,…
Here are a few highlight’s from the March 2021 report on Medicare Payment Policy from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). Leading causes of death The leading cause of death are heart disease, cancer, and respiratory disease. Note that these figures are from 2018. MedPAC notes that the 3rd leading cause of death in 2020…
That is the title of a paper I just published at Value in Health with Suepattra G. May, Lauren M. Zhao, Katalin Bognar, Yong Yuan, John R. Penrod, and John A. Romley. The subtitle is A Stated Preference Survey of Adults Diagnosed With and Without Lung Cancer. The full abstract is below: Objectives: To compare…
In 2020, Medicare premiums and cost sharing were estimated to consume 24 percent of the average Social Security benefit, up from 14 percent in 2000. The Medicare Trustees estimate that in another 20 years, these costs will consume 31 percent of the average Social Security benefit. Medicare Payment Advisory Committee (MedPAC), March 2021 report
Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and US Census Bureau, Woolf et al. (2021) find: Between March 1, 2020, and January 2, 2021, the US experienced 2 801 439 deaths, 22.9% more than expected, representing 522 368 excess deaths…The excess death rate was higher among non-Hispanic Black (208.4 deaths per 100 000) than non-Hispanic White…
Public health spending lags medical spending. On the importance of pre-analysis protocols. Medicare spends over $10 billion on COVID-19 in 2020. Home health = infrastructure? Will enrollment in cancer clinical trials continue to be difficult post-COVID? Yes vs No.
Standard cost-effectiveness measures the value of a treatment based on the cost for an additional unit of health where units of health are measured in quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). For Alzheimer’s disease, however, this approach may be limited. A paper by Garrison et al. (2021) identifies the petals of the value flower that are particularly…
This is the question I–along with co-authors Syvart Dennen, Priti Pednekar , Kelly Birch, Menaka Bhor, Julie Kanter , and Peter Neumann–aim to answer in our new paper in JMCP. The full title is: “For which diseases do broader value elements matter most? An evaluation across 20 ICER evidence reports“. The abstract is below. BACKGROUND: U.S.…
What is a rare disease? The definition varies across countries, but according to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) rare diseases are those with a prevalence of <5 cases per 10,000 people; ultra-rare diseases are those with <1 case per 50,000 people. In most cases, rare disease must not only be rare but also severe, often…