Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Discount rates are commonly used in the world of finance. Would you rather have $1 today or $1 in 5 years? Most people would prefer $1 today. For instance, if you had $1 today and put it in a bank account, it would be worth more than $1 in 5 years. Thus, when making financial…
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. – Soren Kierkegaard
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) last week published a report evaluating the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). MIPS is an approach for CMS to pay physicians caring for Medicare beneficiaries based not just on volume but on value. MIPS evaluates provider value along four dimensions: (1) quality, (2) improvement activities, (3) promoting interoperability, and (4)…
David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian have won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.” Here is a summary of Professor Julius’ contribution from the BBC: Prof David Julius’s breakthrough, at the University of California, San Francisco, came from investigating the burning pain…
Value of nurse practitioners for inpatient care. DTx and outcomes-based contracting. Is there a limit on human survival? Back to normal in Madrid? (en español) “Not statistically significant” is not the same as zero and “When Should Clinicians Act on Non–Statistically Significant Results From Clinical Trials?”
The price of pharmaceuticals are much higher in the U.S. than in other countries. Some policymakers have claimed that international reference pricing could be used to lower the cost of drugs in the U.S. For instance, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act (HR 3) proposed setting the maximum negotiated price Medicare would pay at 120%…
An interesting report from the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies examined the “Use of digital health tools in Europe: before, during and after COVID-19“. Digital health is important not only because the technologies facilitate communication and disease monitoring, but also the technologies facilitate the creation of data that can be used to better…
This question seems simple, but answering the key factors that impact your happiness is complex. Is happiness based on your personal situation (e.g., family, job, income, health) measured in an absolute sense or relative to others? If measured in a relative sense, what reference point is used? One approach to measuring your life satisfaction is…
Previously, I wrote about how the US healthcare system imposes $90 billion of costs on physicians related to drug utilization management. According to a study by Kyle and Frakt (2021), the U.S. healthcare system also imposes a significant burden on patients as well. The authors use the 2019 Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS) to answer…
Did COVID-19 affect quality of life valuations? Medication adherence measurement: claims vs. pharmacy fill data. “Patients’ free choice of physicians is not always good” Digital Health funding stats. Academic research on digital health. Impact of hospice care on family costs. Impact of VBID for patients with diabetes. “Being sick is a full-time job”