Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
In Norway, each primary physician assumes medical responsibility for a well-defined population of patients. Norwegian physicians receive approximately NOK 300 (~$50 USD) per patient on their list so their income is largely determined by list size. This capitated payment is supposed to make up 30% of primary physician income with the remainder coming from FFS…
What’s does a DDD mean for a PBM? What is a QALY? What is the difference between ‘face validity’ and ‘construct validity’? The Pharmacoeconomics journal has a Glossary of Terms used in Health Economics which are very useful for anyone who wishes to disentangle to the jargon used in this field.
Giving corporate executives bonuses based on the performance metrics of the company they manage is one way to incentivize managers to increase profits, sales, company stock price or any other financial measure. But is this the best way to run a company? In 1985, Paul Healy wrote prescient paper of how corporate executives can alter…
Monetary incentives improve performance. This statement is almost gospel in the economics field. For instance, if I pay all my blog readers $1 for each time they visit this website, it is likely that the traffic on Healthcare Economist will increase dramatically. Sales staff compensated on a 100% commission basis often sell more items than…
The latest edition of the Cavalcade of Risk is up at Julie Ferguson’s Workers Comp Insider. Particularly interesting are the comments by Robert Laszewski and Michael Cannon concerning a WSJ article which claims that Health Savings Accounts are faltering. Pro HSA: Michael Cannon of Cato-at-Liberty blog Anit-HSA: Robert Laszewski of Health Care Policy and Marketplace…
The concept of pay-for-performance has been discussed repeatedly in this blog. But what about the other P4P: pay-for-participation? In the pay for participation model, payers compensate physicians to add infrastructure or partake in data collection. For instance, a health plan may pay providers to implement an electronic medical records system. Providers may also compensate physicians…
The Healthcare Economist blog was ranked as one of the top 100 health blogs according to Healthcare100.com [#51]. Some of my other favorite blogs which are also ranked in the top 100 (as of 18 June 2007) are: #8: The Health Care Blog. #33: Health Affairs Blog. #37: The Healthcare IT Guy. #48: Insure Blog.…
According to a recent Christian Health Association poll, healthcare ranks at the top of most Americans’ priority lists. Excluding Iraq, 29% of individuals believed that “providing affordable health care” was the most important issue facing America. This was followed by “Ensuring homeland security” [22%]; “Reducing government spending and taxes” [19%], “Improving public education” [13%], and…
According to the Wall Street Journal (“Gates Grant Targets Health Gauges“), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $105 million to the University of Washington to establish an institute to measure the impact of public-health programs. The new institute which will be created will focus on quantitative measures of health and will be headed…
Jason’s Furman’s blog post on The Economist‘s Free Exchange blog not only has a clever title, but makes a clear argument against an estate tax and in favor of a inheritance tax. Philosophically, this amounts to taxing those who inherit wealth (Paris), but not those who general the wealth (Britney). He cites a paper by…