Cost of Health Care

26 Jun

Posted at 14:04h in Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, Medical Research Centers
Dr. Karen E. Joynt, MD MPH Cardiovascular Division Brigham and Women's Hospital and VA Boston Healthcare System Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public HealthMedicalResearch.com Interview with Dr. Karen E. Joynt, MD MPH Cardiovascular Division Brigham and Women's Hospital and VA Boston Healthcare System Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Joynt:  The main findings of the study were two-fold. First, high-cost patients in Medicare (the top decile of spenders) are responsible for about 80% of inpatient spending in the Medicare program, so understanding more about these patients' patterns of care is really important. Second, we found that only about 10% of acute-care spending for these high-cost Medicare patients were for causes that we generally think of as preventable in the short term, like uncontrolled diabetes, COPD, or heart failure. The rest of the spending was for acute conditions that we generally don't think of as preventable (at least in the short term), such as orthopedic procedures, sepsis, and cancer.

05 Jun

Posted at 04:00h in Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, Social Issues
Peter Muennig, MD, MPH Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management Columbia University School of Public Health NY City, NYMedicalResearch.com eInterview with: Peter Muennig, MD, MPH Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management Columbia University School of Public Health NY City, NY     MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Answer: We find that one of the welfare time limit experiments that led to welfare reform in the United States in 1996 led to increases in mortality rates among experimental group participants over 14-15 years of follow up. MedicalResearch.com: Were any of the findings unexpected? Answer: Yes. Welfare reform led to increases in employment among the experimental group participants. Employment has long been hypothesized to reduce mortality. We examined this experiment to explore whether increases in employment among those exposed to time limits on welfare reduced mortality. We found instead they increased mortality.

04 Jun

Posted at 15:54h in Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, Outcomes & Safety
James D. Chambers, PhD, MPharm Assistant Professor The Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies TuftsMedicalCenter www.cearegistry.org MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Epstein: Using cost-effectiveness evidence to help inform the allocation of expenditures for medical interventions in Medicare has the potential to generate substantial aggregate health gains for the Medicare population with no increases in spending. Reallocating expenditures for interventions in Medicare using cost-effectiveness evidence led to an estimated aggregate health gain of 1.8 million quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), a measure of health gain that accounts for both quality and quantity of life.

27 Apr

Posted at 11:53h in Cost of Health Care, Emergency Care, Stanford
Sridhar Sri SeshadriMedicalResearch.com eInterview with: M. Kit Degado, MD, MS Instructor, Emergency Medicine Affiliated Faculty, Centers for Health Policy/Primary Care and Outcomes Research Stanford University School of Medicine kdelgado@stanford.edu MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Degado:
  • We found that if an additional 1.6% of patients flown by helicopter survive or if there is any improvement in disability outcomes, then helicopter EMS should be considered cost-effective over transporting patients by ground EMS.

15 Mar

Posted at 00:59h in Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Cost of Health Care, JNCI
Gabriel Brooks MD Fellow, Medical Oncology Dana-Farber Cancer InstituteMedicalResearch.com Interview with Gabriel Brooks MD Fellow, Medical Oncology Dana-Farber Cancer Institute MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Brooks: First, we found that there is substantial regional variation in Medicare spending for patients with advanced cancer.  For patients with a new diagnosis of advanced stage cancer, spending in the six months following diagnosis varied by 32% between regions in the highest and lowest quintiles of spending.  And for patients who died from cancer, spending in the last six months of life varied by 41% between the highest and lowest spending regions. Second, we tested the association between area-level spending and survival from the time of advanced cancer diagnosis.  We found that there was no consistent association between increasing spending and survival for any of the five cancer sites included in our study (non-small cell lung cancer, colorectal cancer, pancreas cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer).

09 Mar

Posted at 22:21h in Cancer Research, Cost of Health Care

AURORA, Colo. -- As scientists continue making breakthroughs in personalized cancer treatment, delivering those therapies in the most cost effective manner has become increasingly important. Now researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine have identified new ways of doing just that, allowing more patients to benefit from this...