The Knowledge Worker

“Some diagnostic situations contain a lot of variables. Any given symptom may have several possible causes, and further, these causes may interact with one another and therefore be difficult to isolate. In deciding how to proceed, there often comes a point where you have to step back and get a larger gestalt. Have a cigarette…

Vice

Economic Inquiry has some interesting articles on the vices of drinking and smoking: Minimum Drinking Age Laws do not affect the rate of traffic fatalities.   Fraternity and Sorority membership increases drinking intensity and frequency. Increased Obesity rates are not caused by the Decreasing number of Smokers.

Experts and Their Records

Mechanics not only diagnose what your car needs, they also fix it.  Doctors also both diagnose and treat the patient.  Both of these cases are examples of credence goods. A working paper by Frankel and Schwarz (2009) looks at the economic environment where uninformed customers rely on experts to both diagnose and treat their problems.…

Anti-Insurance

In February, I discussed a cross border insurance plan that covers doctors visits, but not catastrophic medical issues.  Now the No Insurance Club (NIC) offers similar coverage in the U.S.  According to the firm’s press release, “patients receive up to 12 office visits per year that also include immunizations, $4 or less in-office prescriptions, and…

Survival Analysis

If we start with 1000 people and 10% of the population dies each year, how many people will be left in 10 years?  One could figure this out using manually.  However, for more complicated models, involving covariate predictors of survival, using survival analysis is helpful. Survival analysis starts with a hazard function, λ(t), which gives the…

Assorted Links

Waiting: 70 days to see an ob-gyn in Massachusetts. Why Obama’s health reform efforts will succeed where the Clinton’s failed. Government auto inspections do not affect car accident rates. Wellcare’s Bill: $80 million for Medicare/Medicaid fraud, $10 million for SEC violations. McKinsey: Regulation drives complexity. Using prices to ration water. On the table: Removing the tax exemption on…

Medical procedures: What proportion met quality standards?

According the a 2008 Leapfrog Hospital Survey, below are the proportion of each type of medical procedure that met quality standards: Coronary artery bypass graft: 43% Percutaneous coronary interventions: 35% High-risk deliveries: 32% Pancreatic resection: 23% Bariatric surgery: 16% Esophagectomy: 15% Aortic valve replacement: 7% Aortic abdominal aneurysm repair: 5% Source: Binder and Rudolph (HSR…