The impact of expanding cost-effectiveness analysis

Along with co-authors Michelle Skornicki, Michelle Brauer, Julie Villeneuve, Michael Lees, Nadine Hertel, John R. Penrod, and Jeroen Jansen, our paper “An exploratory case study of the impact of expanding cost-effectiveness analysis for second-line nivolumab for patients with squamous non-small cell lung cancer in Canada: Does it make a difference?” was recently published online in…

The problem with odds ratios

Many researchers use logit models to estimate the effect of specific variables on a binary (i.e., 0 or 1) outcome.  How are these models derived?  How are odds ratios calculated?  What are the problems with odds ratios?  I answer all these questions in this post, following a lovely summary by Norton and Dowd (2018). Deriving…

Friday Links

Progress on risk-based agreements. ACOs increase cost? P4P fail with gym memberships. The importance of reading. “Super Bowl of lung cancer immunotherapy” Apple Watch health data leads to murder conviction. plus The Spring is Here! HWR.

How can we keep people out of the hospital?

One idea is to provide additional funding for both formal and informal caregiving services.  For instance, one could subsidize nursing homes or home health agencies on the formal side; for informal caregiving, one could give stipends to individuals to care for their elderly parents.  The question is, does this implementation actually work? This is the…