What role do health economists at the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) play and how do they conduct their cost effectiveness analyses for new treatments? I answer this question today based on NICE’s own documents. According to their guidelines manual, the role of the health economist in clinical guideline development is to: [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Comparative Effectiveness' Category
Theory vs. Reality: End of Life Care
Charles Ornstein is a well-regarded health journalist who has written extensively about end-of-life care. Then his mother became sick. How did his preconceptions about end-of-life care change (if at all) as a result of his experience. An excerpt from the full article is below. I’ve always thought that the high cost of end-of-life care is [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Disease Management Programs Don’t Work
That is the conclusion of this study. More information below: Background The ARRA stimulus package included $2.2 billion for health care cost-effectiveness research focusing on chronic disease prevention and disease management initiatives. These programs aim to address increasing health care costs for a number of diseases, such as: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and smoking-related illnesses. [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Five Reasons That Many Comparative Effectiveness Studies Fail To Change Patient Care And Clinical Practice
The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is poised to develop and oversee a vast portfolio of new comparative effectiveness research. For this endeavor to transform patient care, new evidence must be disseminated to clinicians and patients, understood and considered relevant, and used in the decisions that inform clinical care. According to a Health Affairs paper [...]
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