Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
That is the argument from an interesting post on the Carcinisation website titled “A Case Against the Placebo Effect“. In short, the authors argue that placebos in-and-of-themselves may have small impact out health outcomes. However, care practices in clinical trials may be different such that health outcomes improve or people feel more cared for in…
That is the title of an ISPOR Europe panel I saw with Hugo Pedder, Jeroen Jansen, Dawn Lee and Mark Harries. The goal of sequential pathways model is to be able to answers questions like (i) how does a new treatment impact the cost and effectiveness for patients within a sequence of treatment, or (ii)…
Tyler Cowen on the price of Ozempic. Problems with the OMB’s social welfare function. Link between alcohol and cancer. Disparities in the rural-urban life expectancy. Why will Part D plans “…move drugs that are selected for [MFP] negotiation into a higher cost-sharing tier”?
A paper by Qato et al. (2024) quantifies the degree of of pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) market concentration. Across all payer types, the PBM market was highly concentrated, with an HHI [Herfindahl Hirschman Index (HHI)] of 1972…the HHI was lowest in commercial insurance (1940), with 90 PBM participants, and highest in Medicare Part D (2399),…
A paper by Campbell et al. (2024) provides some guidance. The authors developed a series of recommendations based on literature review, expert interviews and an expert workshop in order to support consistent and transparent evaluation and use of validated family spillover effects in health technology assessments (HTA) and cost-effectiveness analyses (CEA). The expert panel consisted…
The answer to this question, of course, depends on your specific research question. However, it is helpful to review what has been done in previous literature. A paper by Vasileiou et al. (2018) conducted a systematic literature review of all published studies using a single-interview-per-participant designs within three health-related journals: British Medical Journal (BMJ), British…
One of the goals of cost sharing (e.g., copayments, deductibles) is to decrease moral hazard. In other words, if a good is free (or lower cost), you’ll consume more of it than if you had to pay for all of it out-of-pocket. One challenge in health care ours that prices are not transparent. How much…
Health Services Research has decided that studies using logistic regressions should report marginal effects rather than odds ratios. Why did they make this decision? A paper by Norton et al. (2024) identifies 3 key factors. Intelligibility. Consider the case of examining the impact of whether a hospital is in a disadvantaged area on readmission rates.…
The above is the title of a helpful primer from Kenney and Keast (2024). I summarize some key points below. Provide an overview of the pharmacy contracts between stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem. How did the rise of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) impact pharmacy contracting? The Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) Act of1973 spurred the growth…
A de facto number that is used by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is £30,000 per quality adjusted life year (QALY). Some recent literature (Martin et al. 2023) argues for a lower cost-effectiveness threshold (£15,000/QALY or less) based on their marginal cost per QALY (MCPQ) estimates. Alternatively, a paper by Sampson and…