Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) examines whether treatment benefits outweight treatment costs on average for a given patient population. A 2016 paper by Verguet, Kim and Jamison examine the concept of extended cost effectiveness analysis (ECEA) which applies cost effectiveness methodologies to health care policies. The policies are evaluated over 4 domains: (1) health gains; (2)…
Cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) aims to examine whether the benefits of a treatment outweigh the costs. However, whenever one is conducting a CEA a key question is benefits to whom and costs to whom. For instance, a modestly efficacious drug may be cost effective from the patient’s perspective if all or most costs are covered by insurance.…
Dana Goldman, Samuel Nussbaum, and Mark Linthicum have an interesting post on the Health Affairs blog about innovation, value measurement and pricing. The article mentions the new Innovation and Value Initiative, where I serve as the Director of Research. An excerpt is below. New pricing mechanisms are needed to effectively link prices to value; we…
On it’s website, the Instititute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) claims that it is “…a trusted non-profit organization that evaluates evidence on the value of medical tests, treatments and delivery system innovations and moves that evidence into action to improve the health care system. ” A recent article in Huffington Post however, disagrees. They make two key…
Health technology assessments aim to evaluate the costs and benefits of various healthcare treatments and technology. Many organizations that conduct HTAs say they wish to incorporate the patient perspective. In practice, this does not happen often. When it does, there are a number of methodological complexities. How do you incorporate the patient perspective into HTA? A…
What is cost effectiveness analysis or CEA? One definition is that CEAs–at least in the field of health care–measure the difference or ratio between cost of care and the benefits of care for a given intervention compared to an alternative treatment strategy. The intervention could be a new surgical procedure, a drug, a behavior modification program or any other…
Efficacy describes the technical relationship between the technology and its effects (whether it actually works), whereas effectiveness concerns the extent to which application of an efficacious technology brings about desired effects (changes in diagnoses, altered management plans, improvement in health)…Efficiency is an economic concept which relates efficacy and effectivness to resource use. Assessment of efficiency is…
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…