Insurers and physicians can partner to deliver care more efficiently and save costs, according to a study that examined Cigna’s Collaborative Accountable Care initiative’s partnership with the Medical Clinic of North Texas.
Little is known about regional variation in cancer treatment and its determinants. In this publication, authors compare rates of adherence to treatment guidelines for elderly patients across Texas and whether local specialist supply is an important determinant of treatment variation.
State-based Medicaid programs have begun using All Patient Refined–Diagnosis-Related Groups (APR-DRGs) to determine hospital reimbursement rates. This study examined how well APR-DRGs reflect admission costs for childhood cancer chemotherapy to inform clinicians, hospitals and policymakers in the wake of policy changes.
Current medical research and literature may be overemphasizing the role that hospital volume plays in patient outcomes, according to a study co-authored by health economics fellow Vivian Ho.
Woohyeon Kim, Stephen Wolff, Vivian HoApril 15, 2016
This journal article examines the risks patients face in seeking experimental stem cell-based interventions from clinics outside the United States. The authors advocate for new public policies that encourage patients to remain in clinical trials in the U.S.
Kirstin R.W. Matthews, Ana S. IltisNovember 4, 2015
Health care providers add multiple processes to the care of complex cancer patients, believing they prevent and/or ameliorate complications. However, the relationship between these processes, complication remediation, and expenditures is unknown.
Marah Short, Vivian Ho, Thomas AloiaSeptember 22, 2015
This study aimed to develop a systematic approach to classifying childhood cancer-related admissions in administrative data into categories that reflected clinical practice and predicted resource use.
Data on revenues by payer type are used to identify the determinants of rising hospital prices in Texas between 2000 and 2007. By Vivian Ho, Jerome Dugan and Meei-Hsiang Ku-Goto.