Why doesn’t evidence based medicine spread faster?

One reason is that physicians may value their own experiences (i.e., learning by doing) over the accumulated experience across many providers.  A paper by Berndt et al. (2015) look at physician prescribing patterns of antipsychotic.  They note that some physicians concentrate in prescribing specific antipsychotics and others concentrate on prescribing other ones. The authors claim the…

Fixing the “doc fix”

The sustainable growth rate (SGR) was implemented by Congress in1998.  The SGR’s aim was to slowly bring down or at least decellerate Medicare compensation for physicians compensation.  However, each year, it gets reversed by Congress. Now, instead of a gradual decline, the implementation of SGR would  result in about at 25%pay cut for Medicare docs.…

Insurance expansions reduce ER Use

One promise of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was that by giving more people access to health insurance, patients would be more likely to have a regular source of care and would be less likely to use the emergency room. Rick Kronick–the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and a member…

5 Trends 5 years after by ACA

From a PwC report on “Five trends to watch as the Affordable Care Act turns five“: Risk Shift: Raising the stakes for all healthcare players. The ACA added force to new payment models that reward outcomes and penalize poor performance such as high rates of readmission and hospital-acquired conditions. Primary care: Back to basics. Experimentation…

Insurers: Non-profit or For-profit?

The answer is “no” according to the California Franchise Tax Board. California tax authorities have stripped Blue Shield of California, the state’s third largest insurer, of its tax-exempt status in California and ordered the firm to file returns dating to 2013, potentially costing the company tens of millions of dollars. Why did California claim that…