Quotation of the Day
30. If you listen to successful people talk about their methods, remember that all the people who used the same methods and failed did not make videos about it. “100 Tips for a Better Life” from LessWrong.
Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
30. If you listen to successful people talk about their methods, remember that all the people who used the same methods and failed did not make videos about it. “100 Tips for a Better Life” from LessWrong.
No more snow days in medicine. Hospitals overwhelmed. Drug lag. Racial bias and treatment algorithms. Number of COVID-19+ individuals that will show up at your event.
In short, because we had built years and years of previous science, particularly work related to another corona virus, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus. As This American Life reports on the speed of vaccine development: That’s because the spike on this coronavirus that would cause the pandemic, it was very, very similar to…
The Economist has an interesting article on how Japan has been able to largely contain COVID-19. Part of the success has been a strong public health initiatives around avoiding the san-mitsu, or the “3Cs”. The 3Cs to avoid are: Closed spaces, Crowded places, and Close-contact settings. The phrase was blasted across traditional and social media.…
The FDA approval process is slow. Even for COVID-19 vaccines, the process can be time consuming. However, regulators around the world do have some expedited programs. However, a number of countries have programs that expedite review, particularly for the diseases with unmet need, orphan drugs, or when new treatments represent a significant advance over the…
How much are hospital CEOs getting paid? A paper by Mulligan et al. (2020) provides the answer: Between 2010 and 2015, mean hospital CEO compensation (in 2015 US$…) increased 7.8%, from approximately $639,000 to $689,000 (p = .05), and median compensation increased from $431,000 to $464,000. Not surprisingly, CEOs of larger hospitals systems get paid…
That is the conclusion from Woolf et al. (2020) in JAMA this past week. The authors examine rates of COVID-19 mortality in the US between March and October 2020 and compare them with other leading causes of death from March to October 2018. We see that COVID-19 is currently the 3rd leading cause of death…
Am I disabled? EHR burden on physicians: US vs. rest of world. COVID-19 vs. religion. Toilet politics. Giannis on COVID-19. Bonus: Largest US metro areas across decades (for some reason I find this fascinating)
That is the topic of a commentary I wrote with co-authors Joanna MacEwan and Farzad Ali, titled “Does COVID-19 Threaten the Progress Pharmaceuticals Have Made in Reducing Cancer Mortality Over the Last 20 Years?” An excerpt is below: Cancer mortality rates have fallen significantly over the last 20 years. Between 2000 and 2010, overall age-adjusted…
In a paper by Martin et al. (2020) in Health Affairs, CMS’s Office of the Actuary (OACT) has its annual health care spending estimates for 2019. They found that health care spending in the US was $3.8 trillion in 2019, and increase of 4.7%. The share of the economy dedicated to health care rose slightly,…