The Cavalcade of Risk turns 204
Insurance Regulatory Law blog posts this week’s edition of the Cavalcade of Risk. Check it out!
Month: March 2014
The future of cancer therapy: Viruses?
The Economist has an interesting profile of Dr. Angela Belcher, who uses viruses to create batteries and new touchscreens is now moving into the medical field. Here is how she proposes to improve tumor detection–and potential treatment–in the future: The plan is to produce a medical probe which can be used to locate extremely small…
P4P in the UK
General Practitioners (GPs) in the UK NHS are paid a mixture of capitation, lump sum allowances, and a pay-for-performance bonus. The P4P element, the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), rewards GPs according to their performance on a large number of indicators. QOF payments represented up to 20% of GPs ’ income in the first year…
Friday Links
Do some clinical trials go unpublished? Google Glass in hospitals. ECG on your iPhone. Is NIH funding drying up? Reinventing the wheel.
HWR: Mud Season Edition
Brad Wright has posted Health Wonk Review: Mud Season Edition at Wright on Health – you can find the link here.
Are ACOs working?
Maybe. An press release from CMS is very upbeat on ACOs. What do the numbers say? Farzad Mostashari and Ross White review the CMS report and find that results were mixed: Of the 114 ACOs in the program, 54 of the ACOs saved money and 29 saved enough money to receive bonus payments. The 54…
Extended Cost Effectiveness Analysis
Most people know what cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA), but what is extended cost effectiveness analysis (ECEA)? A paper by Verguet, Laxminarayan,and Jamison (2014) describes the ECEA approach as it relates to the benefits of universal public finance (UPF) of specific medical treatments. CEA measures the effectiveness of a treatment relative to its cost. ECEA does this…
Does licensing increase prices for dentists?
Clearly the answer is yes. For many basic tasks, dentists and dental hygenists may perform task of similar quality. However, in some states, dental hygenists are not allowed to perform these tasks. A paper by Wing and Marier find the following: United States, occupational regulations influence the work tasks that may legally be performed by…
Are we running out of antibiotics?
Nicole Allan of the Atlantic discusses why overuse of antibiotics is making them less effective. The fact that antibiotics are less effective did not come as a surprise to many experts. In fact, in 1945, “while accepting a Nobel Prize for discovering penicillin, Alexander Fleming warned of a future in which antibiotics had been used…
Thursday Links
World design impact prize: a syringe? One third of nursing home patients harmed in treatment. Do docs get alternative medicine? Should you conisder getting a PhD in Economics? Always order the large pizza.