Posts by: Tim Odell

The New York Times has an interesting piece out on the overuse of medical technology. To summarize their five pager: There’s not enough data out to suggest that CT Angiography actually reduces costs or improves patient outcomes, but doctors tend to request the tests all the time anyway. They go on to do a so-so job of generalizing the phenomenon…

The problem is not that newer treatments never work. It is that once they become available, they are often used indiscriminately, in the absence of studies to determine which patients they will benefit…

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Dr Alan Garber, MD PhD’s piece in the latest issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, titled “A Menu Without Prices”, highlights the potential benefits of applying more cost effectiveness (efficaciousness?) analysis to medical reimbursement decisions…

For the well-insured, obtaining health care in the United States is like dining in a sumptuous restaurant that has menus without prices. A price-free menu encourages diners to ignore cost when making their selections. Similarly, well-insured patients usually don’t know the prices of medical services at the time they receive them. Even for common procedures, few hospitals list their charges, much less the accompanying professional fees and the out-of-pocket costs; these are only revealed weeks or months later, when the explanation of benefits statement arrives.

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Michael Rosen of the Wisconsin Technology Network (Wisconsin’s got lotsa technology, don’tchaknow?) has a great analysis of how and why the medical device industry is growing faster than the drug industry. In short, it’s because biomedical engineers are cooler than biochemists.
…ok, he doesn’t say that (even if it is true). The real analysis is as follows…

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