Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Our data, for example, show that a third of Medicare’s spending in physician or outpatient settings in 2012 reflects technology that did not exist a decade earlier…When it comes to technology development, the central challenge is to encourage high-value innovation while discouraging innovation that drives up costs without much improving health. Bagley, Chandra and Frakt. Correcting Signals for…
Typically, the FDA evaluates drugs and devices based on whether they are safe and effective. Patient treatment preferences play little to no role in whether a drug or device is approved by the FDA. However, times are a changing. On Wednesday, the FDA released draft guidance whereby they recommend the inclusion of patient preference information…
The Economist reports that adverse events occur relatively frequently when physicians insert catheters: placing needles inside veins deep in the body is notoriously difficult. Some 15-30% of attempts suffer complications, mainly punctured arteries that can lead to infection (around 250,000 cases in America annually), but also bleeding, collapsed lungs and even cardiac arrest. Failure rates in…
One reason is that physicians may value their own experiences (i.e., learning by doing) over the accumulated experience across many providers. A paper by Berndt et al. (2015) look at physician prescribing patterns of antipsychotic. They note that some physicians concentrate in prescribing specific antipsychotics and others concentrate on prescribing other ones. The authors claim the…
The next decades of medicine and health care will be about using technologies and keeping the human touch in practicing medicine. Everyone’s genomes will be sequenced to access personalized treatments. We’ll measure almost any health parameters at home with diagnostic devices and smartphones. The 3-D printing revolution will produce affordable exoskeletons and prosthetic devices. Bertalan…
An interesting essay by Robert F. Graboyes begins by asking the following: American health care has no Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. No Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Burt Rutan or Henry Ford. No innovator whose genius and sweat deliver the twin lightning bolts of cost-reduction and quality improvement across the broad landscape of health care.…