“The medical marketplace is broken”

This quote is from David Blumenthal, a physician and former Harvard Medical School professor, who was the national coordinator for health information technology between 2009-2011.  He describes in an interview for the Atlantic why adoption of electronic medical records has been so slow in the U.S. From the patient’s perspective, this is a no-brainer. The benefits…

Who is health care’s Amazon.com?

That is the quesition PwC’s Health Research Institute (HRI) asks in it’s latest report.  Although the report does not make any specific predictions, there are some interesting case studies it presents.  Some of these case studies include: Earlier this year, Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S5 smartphone, complete with a built-in heart rate monitor. In…

The uselessness of volume-based hospital analysis

Do hospitals with higher volumes have better outcomes? If hospitals specialize or providers learn-by-doing, hospitals with more admissions or more procedures may have higher quality. A paper by Hentschker and Mennicke (2014) examine just this question and find: We define hypothetical minimum volume standards in both conditions and assess consequences for access to hospital services…

Why rich woman don’t get fat

This is the title of an Atlantic article that finds the that although more woman than men are obese, this gap narrows for high-income women. One reason for this difference could be that women are more penalized than men for being fat. In fact, the Atlantic finds that the annual cost of obesity is $4,879…