There is no evidence that NICE approvals cause harm
Chris Sampson challenges a recent article in The Lancet claiming that NICE recommendations reduce population health.
Supply of Health Services
Monopoly and competition in health care supply; models of
health care institutions (hospitals, nursing homes; for-profit, non-profit); care in the community: long term care, informal care; ambulance services; managed care; health care produc- tion functions; cost functions; economies of scale and scope; quality of care; regulation and price controls; the pharmaceu- tical and medical equipment industries.
Opportunity costs, marginal productivity, and cost-effectiveness thresholds: providing useful analysis and communicating results
In our first post, we explained opportunity cost, marginal productivity (of a healthcare system), net benefit, and cost-effectiveness threshold. In this post, we put forward our views on how to use cost-effectiveness thresholds and the existing estimates of marginal productivity… Read More »Opportunity costs, marginal productivity, and cost-effectiveness thresholds: providing useful analysis and communicating results
Opportunity costs, marginal productivity, and cost-effectiveness thresholds: what are they and how are they related?
In this post, we explain key concepts of cost-effectiveness analysis in healthcare and how they are linked: opportunity cost, marginal productivity (of a healthcare system), net benefit, and cost-effectiveness threshold. In another post, to be published tomorrow, we will propose… Read More »Opportunity costs, marginal productivity, and cost-effectiveness thresholds: what are they and how are they related?
Ambulance and economics
I have recently been watching the BBC series Ambulance. It is a fly-on-the-wall documentary following the West Midlands Ambulance Service interspersed with candid interviews with ambulance staff, much in the same vein as other health care documentaries like 24 Hours in A&E. As much… Read More »Ambulance and economics
ICU triage: a challenge and an opportunity
In a well-publicized snapshot of the challenge of ICU triage, Chang and colleagues wrote: Critical care services can be life-saving, but many patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) are too sick or, conversely, not sick enough to benefit. Intensive care… Read More »ICU triage: a challenge and an opportunity
Weekend effect explainer: why we are not the ‘climate change deniers of healthcare’
The statistics underlying the arguments around the weekend effect are complicated. Despite over a hundred empirical studies on the topic, and an observed increase in the risk of mortality for weekend admissions in multiple countries, there is still no real… Read More »Weekend effect explainer: why we are not the ‘climate change deniers of healthcare’
Access to medicines and medical technologies for the global poor
The UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Access to Medicines recently published its long awaited report Promoting innovation and access to health technologies. The report explores and proposes some solutions to the well recognised problem of under-investment in research and… Read More »Access to medicines and medical technologies for the global poor
Weekend effect redux
The ‘weekend effect’ has continued to make headlines since we last posted about it. Last week an open letter to beleaguered Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt was published in The Guardian by a number of prominent scientists and… Read More »Weekend effect redux
Some early thoughts on Brexit and the NHS
In one interview I’ve read an ‘out’ voter describe how they voted for Brexit because they felt there was too much pressure on the NHS. I think it can be inferred that the believed cause of these pressures is immigration. I don’t… Read More »Some early thoughts on Brexit and the NHS
The ‘Weekend Effect’ (and what it means for research and policy)
Today, two new studies are published examining different aspects of the observed increase in the risk of mortality associated with weekend admission, the so-called ‘weekend effect’. In the first [disclaimer: I am an author of this], the results of a… Read More »The ‘Weekend Effect’ (and what it means for research and policy)