Putting a price tag on training new doctors

The nation's teaching hospitals depend heavily on $5.2 billion in annual federal payments for graduate medical education, but few of them know what portion pays for patient care and what portion supports teaching activities. Because hospitals and medical schools will continue to confront funding cutbacks under health reform, they must learn how to quantify the revenue and expenses associated with each activity to receive adequate compensation.     

Putting different price tags on the same health condition: re-evaluating the well-being valuation approach

Many recent writings in health policy have proposed that health be valued directly and in monetary terms using the new well-being valuation method. Yet there is no clear consensus on what the best measure of individual's experience may be for the evaluation process. To shed light on this issue, monetary values for a number of health problems are compared across different well-being measures within the same UK data set. We find that, whilst there is strong internal consistency of health impacts within each well-being measure, hugely different monetary valuations are obtained for the same health problem across different well-being measures. Our results, although should only viewed as illustrative, call for economists to rethink about which measure of well-being or experienced utility to be used in the well-being valuation method, should the approach ever be implemented in real policy contexts.     

Putting a Public Health Face on Clinical Practice

Chronic diseases are the major cause of death and disability worldwide, accounting for 60% of all deaths. This article presents a strategy that has been developed based on an infectious disease management model, to improve earlier detection and treatment of patients with chronic disease. We argue that one of the best ways to combat chronic and infectious diseases is through early detection, treatment, and follow-up, including major lifestyle and behavioral changes. We believe that the infectious disease control model offers opportunities that could be utilized in the prevention of chronic diseases. In this model, infected individuals or cases are identified and treated. This article proposes considering a chronic disease event — e.g. a heart attack, breast cancer diagnosis, or diabetes mellitus diagnosis — as the index case and then screening the siblings and progeny (their brothers, sisters, and children), who are predictably at higher risk of precursors and early disease markers.Early intervention (between the ages of 30 and 40 years in men and between the ages of 40 and 50 years in women) should reap major benefits in terms of risk reduction and lower disease exacerbation. A 5–6% change would have a profound impact on healthcare costs. More importantly, a major segment of the population would enjoy a better quality of life. The goal would be to increase their awareness, target risky behaviors, and promote preventive measures. This also suggests the need to develop a systematic process of monitoring feedback and periodic recall. This, in addition to improved primary prevention, is a reasonable secondary prevention strategy that may provide major benefits to large segments of society, both in the US and worldwide.     

Putting a limit to infinite error

Eine Hauptursache der Armut in den Wissenschaften ist meist eingebildeter Reichtum. Es ist nicht ihr Ziel, der unendlichen Weisbeit eine Tür zu öffnen, sondern eine Grenze zu setzen dem unendlichen Irrtum.