Do physicians know whether patients are adherent?

Doctors have access to life saving medication for a number of illnesses.  However, the medication only works when patients take the drugs.  Are physicians able to determine which patients are adherent to their medication?  According to an article in JAMA Cardiology, the answer is ‘no’ for cardiology patients. Forty (61%) patients reported rarely or never…

Are expensive cancer drugs worth the money?

A paper by Sebastian Salas-Vega and Elias Mossialos attempts to answer this question looking at nine countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States) using data between 2004 and 2014.  They find that: All nine countries—most notably France and Japan—witnessed an improvement in neoplasm-related years of potential life lost,…

Our vets deserve better

The VA has been at the forefront of innovation in integrated care delivery.  ViSTA is the VA’s award winning IT system.  The VA has been aggresive in making sure veterans use generic drugs when these are available. Even if the VA provides high quality care, veterans are having increasing problems accessing this care. The issue…

Is balance billing a good thing?

Are health care prices set on an open market? Almost certainly not. In many cases, physician fees are set by insurers. Currently, for instance, Medicare sets fees for physicians administratively. At Medicare’s inception, however, Medicare did allow physicians to charge whatever fees they wanted; Medicare would pay a base rate and patients would be responsible…

Tell me what you really think

I wrote last week about whether pay-for-performance (P4P) are doomed to fail.  One group of providers–physicians–certainly does not appreciate the current P4P programs instituted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  In a press release, the American Medical Association stated: …it appears that CMS has made significant improvements  by recasting the EHR Meaningful Use program and by…