Better outcomes for patients ignored

I posted this to the National Journal Healthcare blog this morning:

I waited to write this blog because I was hopeful that someone would comment on the July 2, 2009 New England Journal of Medicine article, “The Effect of Medicare Part D on Drug and Medical Spending.” What Zhang, Donohue, Lave, O’Donnell, and Newhouse reported was that “Groups that had no or minimal drug coverage before the implementation of Part D had reductions in other medical spending that approximately offset the increased spending on drugs, but medical spending increased in the group that had more generous previous coverage.”

These findings bring to the forefront the reality of our health care system - just because you do the right thing for a person’s best health does not mean that it will reduce cost or have the same effect for everyone. We can all agree that it is better to take medicine than to have “other medical spending” because it means that you are able to manage your disease. This was the outcome for those who had the least coverage before Medicare Part D. For those who had more coverage the findings are harder to interpret.

In the same way that Medicare Part D was the right choice for patient health, expanding health insurance coverage to all, including preventive care coverage, is the right thing to do now. But we must be honest. Just because it is the right thing to do does not mean it will save money.

The key point is that health care is complex and deserves more than sound bites especially because it is about life, death, and the difficultly in measuring the quality of life.

Health Care Costs: More than Dollars

I posted this to the National Journal Healthcare blog this afternoon:

Today’s New York Times article ”In Health Reform, a Cancer Offers an Acid Test” is the type of analysis and discussion that makes me shudder when I think of how easy it is to misuse the findings from proposed comparative effectiveness research when the focus is just cost. The Times has a chart comparing the average cost of the five types of treatment for prostate cancer. What is lacking is how each procedure impacts the life of the person receiving the treatment.

I propose that all those considering health care reform remember to take the perspective of the patient and health consumer. For each procedure what needs to be included as part of any cost or effective analysis there is also a new measure that takes into account consumer’s assessment of PAID (pain, absence from work, invasiveness of procedure, and disability.) for each procedure under consideration. Patients need more information but it is more than just cost of the procedure.

Reading between the lines

There has been much hubbub about the New Yorker article comparing El Paso to McAllen and virtually nothing about Richard Cooper’s article, ”States With More Health Care Spending Have Better Quality Health Care: Lessons About Medicare.” (December 4, 2008 Health Affairs – Web Exclusive). It is easy to understand why.

The New Yorker analysis resonates to the mythology that pervades thinking about health - that there is great variability in costs of health care because in some areas physicians are not doing what is good treatment but rather taking actions that will only increase their income. The suggestion is made that where there are high Medicare costs it is because there is much waste and the suggestion is stretched to explain all the waste in health care.

Cooper’s analysis however looks at all health spending instead of the slice represented by Medicare data. Cooper finds that, “Medicare spending per enrollee correlates poorly with total health care spending per capita.” He takes it one step further with the data he presents to state that regional variation in Medicare is not a valid measure of how well the health care system is working.

My question is simple - then why do we keep using Medicare data the way we do?