Quotation of the Day
To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. Soren Kierkegaard
Month: May 2021
The real cost of electronic health records
Electronic health records (EHR) are moderns marvels. The ability to communicate and safely store patient information has the potential to greatly improve quality of care. Implementing EHR, however, is not costless. There is of course the cost of the EHR system itself and the cost of training staff on how to use the EHR system.…
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Rise in mental health tele-visits. Inequality, conspicuous consumption and health expenditures. Treating serious illness at home. Why do scientists lie? BMI and income.
ISPOR Summit on Value Assessment
On June 10, I will be presenting at ISPOR’s Summit on “Value Assessment: New Insights, Approaches, and Applications,” which will highlight evolving practices, new methods, and practical applications in value assessment. The Summit will provide a multistakeholder perspective, including recent developments in the incorporation of uncertainty and risk aversion into value measures, covering both the…
Impact of COVID-19 on CMS’ value-based programs
Many Medicare payment initiatives aim to link reimbursement to value. Value includes both cost and quality of care. However, measuring quality of care during a pandemic is problematic. Further, most of CMS’ value-based purchasing programs–such as Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program, the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) and the Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) Reduction Program all…
COVID-19’s collateral deaths
People are not just dying from COVID, but the quarantine’s–while necessary–did exacerbate mental health issues for many individuals. This is especially true for individuals who suffer from Alzheimer’s and dementia. This American Life‘s had a recent episode showing how isolation likely accelerated the downward spiral of the narrator’s grandmother, who suffered from dementia. The Alzheimer’s…
Should you adjust for covariates when analyzing data from randomized controlled trials?
FDA draft guidance published this month says you should. In most cases, adjusting for covariates is not necessary. Randomization generally insurers that covariates are balanced across clinical trial arms. Randomization, however, may not always result in perfectly balanced trial arms. In these cases, the FDA notes that covariate adjustment is perfectly acceptable. There are some…
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Affordability vs. Innovation. “standardizing contracts generates larger savings with less variance than savings from single‐payer strategies” The placebo effect examined Income growth in knowledge industries. Alcohol sales restrictions and alcohol poisoning mortality.
Are drug prices higher in the US than in other countries?
Conventional wisdom holds that the prices of pharmaceuticals are higher in the US than in other countries. But is that really the case? And if so, by how much? Which price? The question we need to answer is “which price” do you mean? There is the manufacturer wholesale price (i.e., gross price) which is how…
Limitations of CMS’s Hospital Star Ratings System
Is your hospital high quality? Well, this depends on what quality means. Does it have low readmission rates? Low rates of mortality? Do they follow clinical guidelines? Are patients satisfied? Are they good at cardiology care? What about cancer treatment? Combining all these different dimensions of quality is a complex task. The Centers for Medicare…