Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Pharmafile has an interesting article on the “Economics of Mental Health”. The article has a number of interesting statistics: The cost: “Mental health issues have been estimated to cost the world economy $2.5 trillion each year. To put that into perspective, the United Kingdom’s gross domestic product (GDP) was $2.6 trillion in 2017.” Costs extend…
This is the topic of a recent publication with co-authors Kata Bognar, Katie Everson, Michelle Brauer, Darius Lakdawalla and Felicia Forma. The full title is Does knowledge of patient non-compliance change prescribing behavior in the real world? A claims-based analysis of patients with serious mental illness. The abstract is below, but do read the whole thing…
That is the conclusion from Dean et al. (2018) published in JAMA Psychiatry. Using a Danish registry of individuals born between 1965 and 1998, the measure the likelihood a crime event (any or violet) between 2001 and 2013. They find that: In a total cohort of 2 058 063 (48.7% male; 51.3% female), the adjusted IRRs…
This is the title of a talk by Jürgen Unützer, Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington. Although you can find an article with a video of the talk and the corresponding article at NEJM catalyst, one interesting section of the talk is pasted below: “How…
Please check out my recent paper titled “Medication Adherence Patterns Among Patients with Multiple Serious Mental and Physical Illnesses” with co-authors Joanna P. MacEwan, Alison R. Silverstein, Darius N. Lakdawalla, Ainslie Hatch and Felicia M. Forma in Advances in Health. This study is unique because it looks at medication adherence patterns among patients with…
The answer appears to be ‘yes’ according to a study by Narr et al. (2017). They find that: Close friendship strength in midadolescence predicted relative increases in self-worth and decreases in anxiety and depressive symptoms by early adulthood. Affiliation preference by the broader peer group, in contrast, predicted higher social anxiety by early adulthood. Results…
A study titled “Patterns of Adherence to Oral Atypical Antipsychotics Among Patients Diagnosed with Schizophrenia” was just published in the November edition of JMCP. This is work with co-authors Joanna P. MacEwan, Felicia M. Forma, Jason Shafrin, Ainslie Hatch, Darius N. Lakdawalla, Jean-Pierre Lindenmayer. The abstract is below. Go check it out! BACKGROUND: Poor medication adherence…
Managed care, as the names suggests, aims to manage health care. The goal is to identify high quality, low cost treatments in order to insure that patients get the best care while keeping premiums low. While good in theory, managed care critics often contend that some of the stricter managed care policies reduce patient access…
Patients with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia often struggle with medication adherence, due to lack of insight into their disease, medication side effects, forgetfulness, and a variety of other factors. One solution to this problem is to use long-acting injectables or LAIs. Whereas most antipsychotics are oral medications, LAIs are typically injectables that you need to…
How will Medicaid expansions affect patient access to pharamceuticals? This question is particularly relevant for patients with serious mental illness. The answer is complicated by the increasing presence of Medicaid managed care plans. Increasingly, states have turned to contracts with Medicaid managed care plans in order to better control costs and reduce budgetary uncertainty. However, in…