Friday Links
CancerLinQ. MD hand hygiene. DeepMind and NHS collaborate. 4 types of macroeconomics. Drug coupons. Are integrated delivery systems a good idea? Stadium finance.
Month: June 2016
HWR at Health Affairs
Christopher Fleming has posted A Pot Luck Health Wonk Review at Health Affairs Blog. Check it out!
Medicaid Managed Care and Drug Utilization for Patients with Serious Mental Illness
How will Medicaid expansions affect patient access to pharamceuticals? This question is particularly relevant for patients with serious mental illness. The answer is complicated by the increasing presence of Medicaid managed care plans. Increasingly, states have turned to contracts with Medicaid managed care plans in order to better control costs and reduce budgetary uncertainty. However, in…
ACA decreased the number of uninsured Americans
This is according to a Urban Institute study by Karpman, Long and Zuckerman (2016). They look at changes in the uninsurance rate and in the rate of full-year insurance coverage for nonelderly adults (ages 18 to 64) overall and by state Medicaid expansion status. They found that: The uninsurance rate for nonelderly adults fell from 17.6 percent in…
CRISPR as a diagnostic?
Innovation can occur various ways. Consider the rapidly evolving area of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) Zika, meet CRISPR. …researchers have incorporated the gene-editing system CRISPR into a diagnostic test — one that can differentiate between two strains of the Zika virus. CRISPR has been hailed for its potential to fix mutations that cause disease.…
Patient perspective on cancer care funding
Improvement in survival (a.k.a. efficiacy) clearly are important, but what other factors matter? According to a systematic literature review by MacLeod, Harris and Mahal (2016), these factors include: patients favour funding for cancer medicines that improve health outcomes demonstrated by ‘clinical efficacy’ [Oh et al.], ‘prolonged survival’ [Goldman et al., Seabury et al. Lakdawalla et al.] and/or…
Friday Links
Cancer liquid biopsies. Regional variation may not reflect inefficiency. Health care costs for average american family >$25,000/year. The 10 year breast cancer treatment. Peanut allergies and kids UnitedHealth exits California Are urban or rural docs more likely to use EMRs?
How does market structure affect technology adoption?
The answer: more competition leads to more technology adoption. This is the finding from a study by Karaca-Mandic et al. (2016). They use data from 100% Medicare claim in 2003 and 2004 as well as linked information on hospitals [American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey] and physicians [American Medical Association (AMA) Masterfile]. Competition is measured two…
Quotation of the Day
“Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.” ― Richard Feynman
Mental Illness is mostly costly condition in the US.
A recent paper by Roehrig finds that annual U.S. spending to treat mental illness is $201 billion. This puts mental illness as the most expensive disease to treat. Previous estimates using data such as the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) did not have mental illness as the most expensive disease. However, MEPS examines health care…