Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
As the N.Y. Times reports, more transparency is coming to provider prices. The White House released an executive order Monday afternoon intended to require insurance companies, doctors and hospitals to give patients more information about precisely what their care will cost before they get it. More transparency is generally good and surprise billing for out-of-network costs has been a major…
An interesting paper from my colleagues at Precision in Medical Decision Making looks at how patients, physicians and nurses value different treatment attributes related to survival and treatment toxicity. The authors surveyed patients, oncologists, and oncology nurses using a combined conjoint analysis and discrete choice experiment survey approach. They found that: Virtually all patients preferred…
NHS incentives to use AI. The gene therapy pipeline. What is a “healthcare cost cure”? Mental illness and preference inconsistency. Monitoring your driving habits.
According to a paper this month in Value in Health from Anupam Bapu Jena, Julia Thornton Snider, Oliver Diaz Espinosa, Andy Ingram, Yuri Sanchez Gonzalez and Darius Lakdawalla, the answer is ‘yes’. The authors look at how curing chronic hepatitis C affects the likelihood of getting a liver, lung, heart, or kidney transplant for individuals…
This is the key question we are left with after some startling news from a startling article from Oren et al. in JAMA. Using data from the CDC Underlying Cause of Death database between 2000 and 2017, they find that: The suicide rate at ages 15 to 19 years and 20 to 24 years increased…
An interesting article over at Kaiser Health News on electronic health records (EHRs): But 10 years after President Barack Obama signed a law to accelerate the digitization of medical records — with the federal government, so far, sinking $36 billion into the effort — America has little to show for its investment…Today, 96 percent of…
Why is the cost of cancer treatments growing so much in recent years? A new paper in the American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) by my at Precision Health Economics colleague Jesse Sussell and co-authors (2019) has an explanation using data between 1997 and 2015 on cancer prices and the size of each treatment’s indicated…
Transparency in Value-Based Healthcare Decision Modeling. The HPV Vaccine Is A Cancer Vaccine, Not A Sex Vaccine Is medical marijuana substitute for opioid use? How safe is sunscreen? Should graduate students form unions?
Entities such as the Panel on Cost Effectiveness in Health and Medicine have argued that we should include the societal perspective when measuring the value of a certain treatment through cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). However, societal perspective is not always the one used. Further, even when the societal perspective is taken, this is often limited to…
Some fun facts from Kaiser Family Foundation about Medicare Part D, which covers prescription drugs. Enrollment has doubled since Part D’s inception in 2019. Enrollment in managed care drug plans (i.e., Medicare Advantage Part D Plans [MA-PD]) has continued to grow, but enrollment in stand alone Part D Plans [PDP] has leveled off or decreased.…