Are providers ready for biosimilars?

Perhaps more education is needed. That is the conclusion from a paper by Giovatto et al. (2024). The authors conducted an online survey of US prescribers and health system specialty pharmacists practicing in the rheumatology, dermatology, and gastroenterology. Among the 31 prescribers and 44 pharmacists who responded to the survey: Only 16.0% of prescribers and…

SHEER: Good practices for incorporating family and caregiver spillovers into health economic evaluations

Illnesses impact not only the patients, but oftentimes impact caregivers and family members as well. However, most economic analyses do not incorporate a diseases’ spillover impacts on caregivers. …a recent review of NICE evaluations revealed that only 3% of technology appraisals included caregiver health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in cost-utility analyses (CUAs). Similarly, Lamsal [2022]…

Long term care spending around the world

A great paper by Gruber et al. 2023 looks at the evolution of long-term care for ten countries: Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain and the United States. Long-term care is divided into three categories: institutional care, formal home care, and informal care. For the 10 countries examined, the paper finds…

Links

VR surgery for PPE. SNAP, food insecurity and medication adherence. Hospital racial composition and VBP. Drinking and jobs (part 1, part 2) Geographies with ultra-low fertility.

Biosimilars Role in Improving Patient Access

Today I was on Mark Hansan and Scott Howell’s podcast Prescription for Better Access Podcast on the topic “Biosimilars Role in Improving Patient Access“. The full episode with description is below or you can download the audio-only podcast here. Biosimilars are entering the market at their fastest pace ever. In this episode, we interview a…

Does private health insurance reduce public hospital procedure wait times?

In countries that have universal health insurance, but limited patient out-of-pocket costs for public hospital services, non-urgent hospital treatment often has a waiting list in public hospitals. To address this issue, some countries (e.g., UK, Canada) use strategies such as setting maximum wait targets, monitoring provider performance, or adding public funding; other countries (e.g., Australia,…

Quotation of the Day

A great conversation is between two people who think the other is wrong. A bad conversation is between those who think something is wrong with you. Micah Goodman, as written in David Brooks’ book How to Know a Person