Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) claims that although cost-effectiveness is highly valued in its health technology appraisal process, it sates that there are other factors considered relevant. However, no explicit weight is assigned to these other factors. Do they matter? A paper by Dakin et al. (2015) tries to answer this question by looking…
While we are waiting for the King v. Burwell verdict, which could repeal large sections of Obamacare, the house of representatives has already approved rolling back some ACA provisions. Modern Healthcare reports: Lawmakers postponed final passage of the proposed Protecting Seniors’ Access to Medicare Act despite a majority voting in favor of the bill. The…
In the past decades, many surgeries have gone from a standard, open surgical approach to a minimally invasive one using laproscopic, endoscopic, and catheter based techniques. What has been the effect of these innovations on medical spending and employee absenteeism? To answer this question, a paper by Epstein et al. (2013) examines a sample of…
What role do health economists at the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) play and how do they conduct their cost effectiveness analyses for new treatments? I answer this question today based on NICE’s own documents. According to their guidelines manual, the role of the health economist in clinical guideline development is to:…
Charles Ornstein is a well-regarded health journalist who has written extensively about end-of-life care. Then his mother became sick. How did his preconceptions about end-of-life care change (if at all) as a result of his experience. An excerpt from the full article is below. I’ve always thought that the high cost of end-of-life care is…
That is the conclusion of this study. More information below: Background The ARRA stimulus package included $2.2 billion for health care cost-effectiveness research focusing on chronic disease prevention and disease management initiatives. These programs aim to address increasing health care costs for a number of diseases, such as: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and smoking-related illnesses.…
The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is poised to develop and oversee a vast portfolio of new comparative effectiveness research. For this endeavor to transform patient care, new evidence must be disseminated to clinicians and patients, understood and considered relevant, and used in the decisions that inform clinical care. According to a Health Affairs paper…