Understanding the economics of healthcare | news @ Northeastern

Nearly $3 trillion is spent on healthcare each year, so tomorrow?s healthcare workers need to understand both the clinical and economic impacts of various health practices. Photo by istockphoto.

Patients, gov?ern?ment, and industry spend some $3 tril?lion a year on health?care, making it one of the most pressing issues facing our country. Unsur?pris?ingly, rising health?care costs have sparked a national debate, one that is largely asso?ci?ated with the uncer?tain?ties sur?rounding health?care spending, according to Roger Edwards, an assis?tant pro?fessor in the depart?ment of phar?macy prac?tice.

For tomorrow?s health?care workers, nav?i?gating that debate is of crit?ical impor?tance. For this reason, ??Eval?u?a?tion of Phar?ma?ceu?ti?cals and Phar?macy Practice??a class for doc?toral stu?dents in the phar?macy program?is treated as the equiv?a?lent of a cap?stone?course.

This semester, Edwards worked with some 135 fifth-??year stu?dents on 23 projects that syn?the?sized eco?nomic and clin?ical infor?ma?tion. Each project aimed to tease out the cost effec?tive?ness of phar?ma?ceu?tical treat?ments for var?ious health con?di?tions, from HIV to Alzheimer?s dis?ease. Twenty projects were sub?mitted to the pro?fes?sional sec?tion of the Amer?ican Society of Health-??System Phar?ma?cists Midyear Clin?ical Meeting in Las Vegas, Nev., and all of them were accepted.

Ear?lier this month, 71 of the stu?dents attended the meeting and pre?sented their find?ings to a pro?fes?sional audi?ence com?prising health?care deci?sion makers in industry and acad?emia. An Under?grad?uate Provost Research award cov?ered travel expenses for the stu?dents who pre?sented their?work.

Seventy-??one North?eastern stu?dents pre?sented research at the Amer?ican Society of Health-??System Phar?ma?cists Midyear Clin?ical Meeting. Photo by Jack Reynolds.

?The entire research expe?ri?ence has grown my con?fi?dence in being able to apply these skills in any future set?ting,? said stu?dent Dennis Tung. In col?lab?o?ra?tion with five class?mates, he pre?sented an analysis of Rilu?zole, the drug used in Vet?erans Admin?is?tra?tion hos?pi?tals across the country to treat ALS, an ill?ness that dis?pro?por?tion?ately affects veterans.

Rilu?zole treat?ments cost a total of $10.6 mil?lion per year, accounting for approx?i?mately two per?cent of the VA?s budget. After reviewing nine studies per?taining to the safety, effi?cacy, and patient out?comes of Rilu?zole treat?ment and four eco?nomic studies per?taining to the drug?s cost effec?tive?ness, the stu?dent group per?formed a budget-??impact analysis.

Ulti?mately, the group used its data to rec?om?mend that the VA keep Rilu?zole in its treat?ment protocol.

Other groups designed deci?sion trees to eval?uate the cost effec?tive?ness of one drug over another. For example, fidax?omicin and van?comycin both treat a bac?te?rial infec?tion that kills 14,000 patients each year. The cur?rent treat?ment, van?comycin, costs $1 bil?lion annu?ally. Fidax?omicin, on the other hand, was newly approved in the spring of 2011 and costs more per treat?ment, but some studies have shown that it reduces read?mis?sion rates. The stu?dent group ana?lyzing this tradeoff found that hos?pi?tals would lose the cost of 50 to 80 hos?pital days per 100 patients if they switched to the new treatment.

These two models?decision tree and budget analysis?are the dom?i?nant methods for eval?u?ating the eco?nomic and clin?ical impli?ca?tions of health?care prac?tices, said Edwards. ?If we can teach our stu?dents to be better con?sumers of health-??economic infor?ma?tion then we are serving a broader pur?pose of them being health pro?fes?sionals in the com?mu?nity,? he explained. ?They need to be crit?ical con?sumers of this kind of infor?ma?tion and they cannot do that unless they study the lit?er?a?ture and do a hands-??on?project.?

Source: http://www.northeastern.edu/news/2012/12/understanding-the-economics-of-healthcare/

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