Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
One key aspect of many medications is that they not only help people feel better, but often these medications can help them re-enter the workforce, work more hours, work more productively, or all of the above. However, when evaluating new treatments for diseases that impact older Medicare beneficiaries (≥65 years), should we take into account…
When valuing new health technologies, we mostly focus on how these technologies improve patient health. However, there may be additional impacts. For instance, the treatment may improve your health such that you are able to return to work or become more productivity at work. How can we measure this additional value? Two common approaches are…
Based on analysis from National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs), multifactor productivity (MFP) in the health care and social assistance sector declined by 0.4% per between 1987 and 2018. On the other hand, the economy as a whole experience a 0.9% increase in MFP. With new technology, telehealth, gene therapies, treatments going generic, is it…
Medicare is cutting reimbursement to hospitals. Austin Frakt (HSR 2013) gives some highlights findings from a CMS report: [The ACA] will permanently reduce the Medicare payments hospitals would otherwise receive. Its ‘productivity adjustment’ will scale payments downward by the average rate at which private nonfarm businesses’ productivity increases. That rate has been estimated to be…
The Healthcare Economist has written a lot about the fact that there exists significant regional variation in health care spending. Is this due to a provider cultural norms? Or are other factors at play? A paper by Chandra and Staiger (2007) claim that productivity spillovers may explain this results. I summarize their proposition in more…
“A problem clearly stated is a problem half solved.” Dorothea Brande For more tips on getting answers to the questions you need, see this Lifehacker article.
For many years, fee for service payment was the status quo. FFS model encourages hospitals to adopt the following strategies to maximize market share and profits: Centered on short-term acute care Focused on specialist alignment Driven by a volume-based service-line strategy Using expensive medical equipment purchases to encourage physician referrals Attracting patients with new construction…
What is multifactor productivity? Multifactor productivity (MFP) is a measure of real output per combined unit of labor and capital, reflecting the contributions of all factors of production. A change in multifactor productivity reflects the change in output that cannot be accounted for by the change in combined inputs. As a result, multifactor productivity measures…