Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
From the BBC: “…researchers found Web searches for common symptoms such as headache and chest pain were just as likely or more likely to lead people to pages describing serious conditions as benign ones, even though the serious illnesses are much more rare. Searching for ‘chest pain’ or ‘muscle twitches’ returned terrifying results with the…
There are now 33 million people living with HIV, including 2 million children. About 2.7 million people became newly infected with the virus each year. Combating this epidemic is one of the top priorities facing public health workers around the world. With limited resources, what strategy should be pursued? As of now, a vaccine…
In short: yes. A study by Rising, Bacchetti, Bero (2008) compares mandatory trial submissions to the FDA with information on trials which appear in academic journals. The authors find that “Discrepancies between the trial information reviewed by the FDA and information found in published trials tended to lead to more favorable presentations of the NDA drugs…
I will be on vacation for a few days for the Thanksgiving holiday. Blogging will resume on Monday. For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the U.S. a much higher percentage of medical is paid for out of pocket. Further, there are about 45 million uninsured. In Canada, the government pays for almost all health care. The benefits and costs of a centralized, universal health care system have been discussed previously on this blog (see Oct 2, 2007 and…
Patients choose hospitals based on the quality of the medical care they receive and the hospital’s distance from their home. But what nonclinical criteria do patients value most? The Salud y Gestión blog reviews the findings of a study in The McKinsey Quarterly. The study found that patients rank the following as the most important…
Randall Parker of East Carolina University has a detailed overview of how the Great Depression unfolded. HT: Marginal Revolution.
Health economics, physicians and health services researchers have found that overuse, not underuse, is the major problem for many medical services. Yet you rarely here a campaign to reduce that quantity of medical care provided. Why is this? An editorial in Health Services Research gives two important explanations for this. First, measuring overuse is difficult.…
Health economists and policymakers have lots of ideas of how to improve the health care system. Yet few of these reforms are implemented. Why? Max Hotopf of Healthcare Europa tries to answer this question in the context of Europe’s attempts at healthcare reform. Below are some of his arguments and my comments. Decentralization. “In most…
How do financial arrangement between physicians within a medical group affect efficiency levels? This is the question Gaynor and Pauly (JPE 1990) attempt to answer. Theory The authors assume that the quantity of medical services is produced by the following production function: qi = f(hi, ti, ki, ei, θi) h: physician hours, t: non-physician hours,…