Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
In drug development, clinical trials typically aim for a population that is representative of the patients who would be eligible for the treatment. While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) typically focus on measuring the average health impact of a drug across this population, a paper Basu and Gurjal (2020) argue that treatment effect heterogeneity and self-selection…
Why payers support prior authorizations. Russia health care fact of the day. Doug Glanville, comma. “Schizophrenia is not a casserole illness.” Mortality vs. new cases.
Antibiotic resistance is a problem. One study from Europe found that in 2015 there were 33,110 deaths attributable to antibiotic resistance; accounting for morbidity as well, antibiotic resistance lead to a a decrease of 874,541 disability-adjusted life years. CDC data show that antibiotic resistant bacteria and fungi caused 35,900 deaths in 2019, 12,800 deaths due…
Recently I read an interesting book called Moneyland by Oliver Bullough. The book describes how with porous borders facilitated by the internet, the rich can evade taxes, hide assets, and basically pick and choose the international legal system most favorable to their interests. One interesting part of the book discusses health care in the Ukraine…
At drug launch, treatments have some benefit and cost. However, drug prices may change over time. Additionally, treatment benefits may rise or fall depending on how well efficacy translates into effectiveness and how well physicians learn to manage adverse events. Mattingly and Love (2020) provide a case study of how cost-effectiveness analysis can change over…
Modelling COVID-19 dynamics. The cost of medication non-adherence. Hydroxychloroquine is out; dexamethasone is in. CMS and value-based pricing. PhRMA: After 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, where are we now?
A recent paper in BMJ Open by Moore et al. (2020) aims to estimate the cost of pivotal trials for recently approved drugs. The authors use the IQVIA CostPro Mid-Level Tool to estimate the cost of these trials. Note that a pivotal trials is one that provides ‘substantial evidence’ of benefit to justify marketing approval,…
There has been much hype about how artificial intelligence (AI) can revolutionize health care. Has it been able to do so? According to a The Economist‘s Technology Quarterly on AI and its limits, the answer is not as much as we had hoped. First, the hype: PWC…predicts that artificial intelligence will add $16trn to the…
What factors predict use of telemedicine? A paper by Reed et al. (2020) uses primary care data from Kaiser Permanente between 2016 and 2018 to find the answer. Note that these results are pre-COVID. Choosing telemedicine was statistically significantly associated with patient sociodemographic characteristics. For example, patients aged 65 years and over were less likely…
Hospitals losing $50 billion per month? Coronavirus vaccine tracker. Staffing up for the surge. Does SexEd work? A capabilities approach to health status assessment. The end of specialty drugs. When “blood money” is a good thing.