What is a Pseudo R-squared?

When running an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, one common metric to assess model fit is the R-squared (R2). The R2 metric can is calculated as follows. R2 = 1 – [Σi(yi-ŷi)2]/[Σi(yi-ȳ)2] The dependent variable is y, the predicted value from the OLS regression is ŷ, and the average value of y across all observations…

Quality of care and prices

There have been a number of studies that have examined how publicly reporting quality ratings (for health plans, physicians, hospitals or other health care providers) affects market share.  Less attention has been paid to the effect of measured quality on health care prices.  A paper by Huang and Hirth (2016) aim to answer just this…

A Christmas present?

Good news reported from the NY Times: In a scientific triumph that will change the way the world fights a terrifying killer, an experimental Ebola vaccine tested on humans in the waning days of the West African epidemic has been shown to provide 100 percent protection against the lethal disease. The vaccine has not yet…

Staying healthy during the holidays

Christmas, Hanukah and Kwanza bring a sense of joy to many.  At the same time, the holiday times are often a time of stress as well.  There is financial pressure to buy presents for your children, pressure to make Christmas perfect, family members not getting along, etc. These and other challenges around the holidays problems…

Are new anti-cancer drugs worth the cost?

The high price of cancer treatment often grabs headlines. But how much have patients benefited from these new treatments.  A paper by Howard et al. (2016) look at new cancer treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), metastatic kidney, breast, or lung tumors and they generally find that the answer is ‘yes’, recent anti-cancer treatments have delivered…