Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
That is the topic from a recent study by Hayes et al. (2024): Payments for some diagnostic scans undertaken in outpatient settings were unbundled from Diagnosis Related Group based payments in England in April 2013 to address under-provision. Unbundled scans attracted additional payments of between £45 and £748 directly following the reform. We examined the…
Perhaps so according to the health policy editor at the Guardian. He writes that as NHS has grown weaker, private medical insurance is becoming a more attractive option. The long delays for NHS care that are now endemic – and cause so much worry, risk and harm to those left waiting – are not going…
According to the OECD, In 2021 the U.S. spent $1,432/capita on pharmaceuticals compared to only $517/per capita in the UK. The UK’s figure was slightly higher that Poland and Norway, but less than Latvia, the Slovak Republic, Portugal and Romania. How does the UK spend so little on drugs? Many people focus on the efforts…
A new study by Choi et al. (2020) compares the health of individuals aged 55-64 in the US compared to England. They use data from Health and Retirement Study (HRS)–in the US–and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) for 2008-2016. Health is measured across 16 outcomes: 5 self-assessed outcomes, 3 directly measured outcomes, and…
A paper by Frew and Breheny (2019), aimed to answer this question by conducting a Delphi Panel of English and Welsh decision makers who allocated funding for public health for local government. Unsurprisingly, cost, health outcomes and quality of life were the most important factors. Beyond these top 3 factors, interventions’ impact on productivity and…
Typical hours when illness strikes is 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. In the US, typical physician hours are 9-5, Monday through Friday. Although this is changing (CVS Minute Clinics have Saturday and Sunday hours), it is still difficult for individuals who are work and are ill to see a doctor without taking…
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is well known for providing free care to all its citizens. However, will £0 out-of-pocket payments be a thing of the past? Maybe so according to a recent survey of UK Members of Parliament (MPs). Pharmafile reports: In response to the question “if the challenges facing the NHS are…
General Practitioners (GPs) in the UK NHS are paid a mixture of capitation, lump sum allowances, and a pay-for-performance bonus. The P4P element, the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), rewards GPs according to their performance on a large number of indicators. QOF payments represented up to 20% of GPs ’ income in the first year…
On Wednesday, many of the NHS workers went on strike. Seven thousand of the day’s 30,000 operations were cancelled. Why are workers striking? One reason is pensions. According to a new government plan, workers would be required to increase their pension contributions 3.2 percentage points without seeing an increase in the value of their pensions. Additionally,…
Health Reform in the U.S. means more government involvement in health care. More public insurance (expanding Medicaid), more government intervention in the insurance market (health exchanges), and government being a driving force for innovation (the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation). In the UK on the other hand, “Health Reform” means more privatization, not less. As…