Healthcare

For medications available in multiple formulations, are there significant price differences between formulations, and what are the opportunity for savings if prescribers ordering the more expensive formulation switched to the less expensive formulation?

Physician productivity is an important driver of key healthcare outcomes, such as quality of care, treatment costs and patient satisfaction, because physicians influence a vast majority of treatment decisions, and are central to the care delivery process. Thus, it is critical for researchers to understand how transformation technologies, such as electronic medical records (EMRs) impact physician productivity.

Despite the high volume of health care expenditures, it is often characterized by pricing opacity, leaving consumers in the dark when making critical healthcare decisions. Here, we examine the implications of price transparency, that is emerging on account of policy mandates and innovative health tech companies, both theoretically and empirically.

The rapid proliferation of mobile health solutions has slowly integrated into the healthcare landscape, creating medical value through diverse ways. To understand these potential impacts, we propose a more detailed framework, specifically for classifying mHealth technologies by type of technology, level of institutional integration, and function – and examine how a position along these three dimensions can create possibilities and impose limitations on the potential value created by the technology.

Because patients may receive care at multiple institutions within a region, “single-site” studies may under - or over-represent key clinical features such as the number of affected patients, the severity of disease, or the extent of treatment. Integrating health records across care delivery sites is thus critical to developing a more comprehensive and accurate picture of health and healthcare delivery for the individual, and in aggregate may provide clearer insight into the health of particular populations.