Category: Health

Doctors who care for the poor: Paying the hidden cost of Medicaid

A groundbreaking study has finally put a dollar figure on a previously unanswered question: how much do physicians’ practices, due to government regulation, pay to ensure their poorest patients get the right prescription drugs? Turns out the answer is $8.02 per prescription, on average, or $1,110 annually for high blood pressure and high cholesterol medications alone, according to research from Jonathan D. Ketcham, an assistant professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business, and Andrew J. Epstein, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine.

Benchmarking tool zeros in on supply chain ills and opportunities in health care

Supply expense is the second highest operational cost in hospitals, but traditional healthcare benchmarking doesn’t pinpoint factors that contribute to supply-expense performance, nor does it enable hospital supply chain professionals to see how they stack up against similar organizations. To address these problems, the Association for Healthcare Resources & Materials Management (AHRMM) and the W. P. Carey School of Business recently launched SCMetrixTM, an online benchmarking tool. It aims to give hospital professionals a holistic view of supply chain performance and the factors contributing to it.

VEBAs: Autoworkers’ union shares the risk of rising health care costs

The tentative contract agreement that assigned a role to the United Auto Workers in managing the healthcare costs of its General Motors members was a turning point in the relationship between business and labor — and a sign of things to come in a global economy. In fact, Chrysler was seeking similar healthcare concessions in contract talks with the union. It’s all about risk-sharing. VEBAs — Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Associations — will most likely make declining U.S. manufacturing industries more competitive; however, they may do little to reverse sagging U.S. union participation, according to experts at the W. P. Carey School of Business.

Video: U.S. health care costs impacted by technology innovations, drug research investments

Much of the increase in the price of healthcare in the United States can be traced back to technology advances that improve patient outcomes, but are expensive to develop and implement. Offsetting some of that expense are the savings that result from drug therapies that  have replaced other, more costly treatments. In a video interview conducted in collaboration with The Communications Institute, Knowledge@W. P. Carey asked health economist Marjorie Baldwin of the W. P. Carey School of Business to analyze some of the causes of rising healthcare costs.  

Video: Complexity, divisiveness cloud health care reform prognosis

The healthcare system in the United States has been slowly collapsing over the past 30 years, according to Bradford Kirkman-Liff, professor of health policy and biotechnology at the W. P. Carey School of Business. In a video interview conducted in collaboration with The Communications Institute, Kirkman-Liff explores the sources of pressure on the system, including the impact of large numbers of patients who are uninsured and the cost of pharmaceuticals. The prospects for reform, however, are clouded by what Kirkman-Liff calls the divisiveness of the national discussion.

Biologic drugs a good buy in U.S.

The soaring cost of prescription drugs is a major concern in the United States, but drugs in one important category — biopharmaceuticals, or drugs produced through biotechnology — actually do not cost more in the United States. Michael F. Furukawa, assistant professor in the School of Health Management and Policy at the W. P. Carey School of Business, and his co-author found that while the United States is by far the biggest user of biopharmaceuticals, the prices for these drugs in the United States are comparable to those in a broad range of countries.