Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Atul Gawande has written yet another excellent article in the New Yorker. This one about end of life care. In the debate surrounding health reform, many politicians hijacked the serious discussion of end-of-life decisions and decisions to use non-invasive medical treatment were termed death panels. But end-of-life decisions merit further investigation. Not only can giving…
Here is one more excerpt from the book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. The book often discusses the intersection between Westernized medicine and more traditional healing arts. Since mental/spiritual well-being often affects physical well-being, it should be no surprise that more traditional ritual ceremonies should offer some health improvement. This is one of…
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk is up at Colorado Health Insurance Insider.
I just completed reading a very interesting book about cross-cultural medical care. The book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, and deals with the problems physicians face when treating one Hmong girl in Merced and the problems the parents of this child face when dealing with Western medicine. One interesting describes the progression…
The HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) is a standardized survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients’ perceptions of their hospital experience. HCAPHS is the first national standard for collecting and reporting hospitals quality data. The survey asks discharged patients 27 questions about their recent hospital stay. The survey is…
I will be out of town until Monday night. Blogging will resume Tuesday.
How the NFL Fights Staph Infections. Blogging about Sports and Economics. Is Medicaid coverage bad for your health. One healthy recovery. Physician ratings are coming.
Medicare Part D increases beneficiary utilization of drugs, but does not decrease utilization of other medical services or improve health. That is the conclusion Kaestner and Khan (2010) reach using data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey. Many other studies have found that prescription drug insurance plans increase drug use. After Medicare Part D drug…
The generalized linear model (GLM) is a flexible generalization of ordinary least squares regression. OLS restricts the regression coefficients to have a constant effect on the dependent variable. GLM allows for the this effect to vary along the range of the explanatory variables. The basic structure of GLM estimator is as follows: g(Y) = Xβ…
An energy drink called Cocaine has received a lot of press. Texas has barred the sale of the drink in the state. The FDA made the manufacturers of Cocaine change the label so it looked less like white powder. To comply with FDA directives, the cans now declare “This product is not intended to be…