Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Many papers have attempted to calculate hospital efficiency before and after a policy change. Most research, however, does not take into account quality levels when analyzing these changes in efficiency. For instance, a doctor may increase the number of patients per hour that they visit by 50%, but if this is accomplished simply by lowering…
Should hospitals with long waiting times have higher or lower budget transfers? Offering hospitals who have low wait times more money will increase a hospital’s incentives to decrease wait times. On the other hand, thus policy may hurt the busier hospitals and may not alleviate the wait times of those who are waiting the longest.…
Physician scorecards have been a highly touted means to improve healthcare quality. One example is NY state’s coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) Surgery Reporting System. One side effect of scorecards is that surgeons may choose to operate on healthier patients in order to maximize their scorecard grade. In fact, over 60 percent of NY cardiothoracic…
“…purchasers typically reimburse health care providers on the basis of the volume and intensity of the services provided, rather than the quality or cost-effectiveness of those services. The result is a financing system akin to paying academics on the basis of the volume and intensity of footnotes.” This website has blogged extensively on pay-for-performance schemes…
Why do nonprofit hospitals exist? If they act exactly as for-profit hospitals, then they should be under private ownership. If they act according to some other maximization strategy, what is it? These are the questions that Jill Horwitz and Austin Nichol look to answer in their 2007 NBER working paper. First, let us examine the…
Many times on this blog, I have commented about pay-for-performance (P4P) programs. A healthcare economist, physician, or health services researcher may wonder where they can get data regarding P4P. In truth, getting P4P data is difficult; this is reinforced by the fact that for most physicians, P4P incentives make up a small portion of their…
What is a good metric to measure if a doctor is adequately vaccinating their patients? For instance, is the pediatrician Dr. Smith doing an adequate job of giving his patients flu shots? One of the easiest, and most common metrics used is simply the vaccination rate. Vaccination rate = (nbr of patients vaccinated)/(total nbr of…
Earlier this month, VentureBeat reported that QuickHealth, a Burlingame, Calf. company that operates walk-in medical clinics, said it has raised an $8.5 million in a second round of financing. The company’s report states the following: Take Care Health Systems LLC, an operator of retail clinics predominantly in the Midwest, completed its sale to Walgreen Co.…
The largest P4P program is run by California’s Integrated Healthcare Associates (IHA). A 2006 report (“Advancing quality through collaboration“) chronicles IHA’s progress in working with the California Association of Physician Groups as well as Dr. Stephen Shortell to establish a P4P measures. The report has two very interesting summary tables: one describes how the IHA…
The popularity of specialty medical facilities (SMF) has increased over the years. The number of Medicare-certified ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) has doubled to 3,371 during the past decade. A question remains: are these “Focused Factories” good for society? In an article by Casalino, Devers and Brewster, (“Focused Factories…“) the authors try to answer this question.…