Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
How does ICER plan to determine whether health plans offer fair access to pharmaceuticals? I summarized their approach last year as outlined in their white paper titled “Cornerstones of ‘Fair’ Drug Coverage: Appropriate Cost-Sharing and Utilization Management Policies for Pharmaceuticals.” Last month, final protocol for their “Barriers to Fair Access Assessment“. While the approach follows…
Prior authorization is a pain. A paper by Howell et al. (2021) found that the total cost of various utilization management schemes is $93.3 billion of which physicians devote $26.7 billion worth of time to navigate utilization management systems. Payers would argue that prior authorization helps to control costs and stop the prescribing of unnecessary…
“…current inflation levels are much closer to past inflation peaks than the official series would suggest.” Impact of minimum wage on health Alcohol excise tax impact on drinking. Good looking CEOs? 100m Americans have health care debt.
Today, one of my studies was published. The title of the study was “Economic burden of antibiotic-not-susceptible isolates in uncomplicated urinary tract infection: Analysis of a US integrated delivery network database” This is work with co-authors Alen Marijam, Ashish V. Joshi, Fanny S. Mitrani-Gold, Katie Everson, Rifat Tuly, Peter Rosenquist, Michael Gillam & Maria Elena…
While many patients and physicians feel that it is increasingly difficult to get insurance to cover new treatments, a JAMA Viewpoint (Resneck 2020) demonstrates this trend numerically. Prior authorization requirements increased from 8% to approximately 24% of covered drugs on Medicare Part D plans between 2007 and 2019.1 In 4 therapeutic classes (including antidepressants, autoimmune disease…
COVID-19 vaccines have had a huge beneficial impact on patient health. One study found that between December 2020 and June 2021, COVID-19 vaccines saved 240,000 lives (Vilches et al. 2022). The figure below shows that as the Delta and Omicron variants spread in the fall of 2021, COVID-19 vaccines prevented significant number of deaths according…
Can you see the problem? Lost Generation of Innovative Apps? Health/education industry loses jobs vs. pre-pandemic levels. History of mall walking. Creation of the Americas Health Corps
Interesting study from Hegland et al. (2022) in HSR. The authors used data from Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), American Hospital Association Survey, Hospital Compare, and American Community Survey data and find that: Non-Hispanic Black individuals live in zip codes supplied, on average, 0.11 more beds per 1000 population (SE = 0.01) than places where non-Hispanic…
What should you do when you want to conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis based on efficacy estimates from clinical trials but the trial has missing data. One common approach—known as complete case analysis (CCA)—is to discard the participants with incomplete observations. This approach is problematic as not only is there a loss in efficiency of the…
That is part due to the squeeze on generic drug pricing from group purchasing organizations and others. This 60 Minutes report is interesting.