The Health Care Handbook Quotes

“When analyzing the cost of U.S. health care, it’s important to remember that spending is not spread evenly among all patients. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, in 2009, 21.8% of health care spending came from just 1% of patients. That’s roughly three million people in the U.S. who each spent about $90,000 in a year on health-related expenses. Further, the AHRQ states, “[T]he top decile of spenders were more likely to be in fair or poor health, elderly, female, non-Hispanic whites and those with public-only coverage. Those who remained in the bottom half of spenders were more likely to be in excellent health, children and young adults, men, Hispanics, and the uninsured.”44 The fact that so many resources go to so few patients led to the term “super-utilizers.” Increasingly, policy efforts focus on how to reduce costs among this group.”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“The breadth and consistency of the U.S. under performance across disease categories suggests that the United States pays a penalty for its extreme fragmentation, financial incentives that favor procedures over comprehensive longitudinal care, and absence of organizational strategy at the individual system level.”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“meta-analyses of the same data can come to different conclusions depending on their design and inclusion criteria, so bias among the designers of the meta-analysis is highly important but often overlooked.”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“Evidence-based medicine (EBM) seeks to integrate the best research evidence with clinical judgment and the patient’s values and preferences, while keeping in mind safety, effectiveness, and the cost of medical procedures.”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“The research system lacks a consistent way to retract published research later determined to be invalid. Researchers often continue to cite the results of invalid papers for many years after they have been retracted; even more surprising, many papers found to be fraudulent are never retracted at all.44”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“The research system lacks a consistent way to retract published research later determined to be invalid. Researchers often continue to cite the results of invalid papers for many years after they have been retracted; even more surprising, many papers found to be fraudulent are never retracted at all.”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“Five identical experiments may only produce the desired result once; but if that one trial is the only one submitted and published, the general public would have the false impression that 100% of the experiments were successful.”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“Many studies are refuted at a later date. Of the 49 most influential studies during a 13-year period, 45 of them found an intervention to be effective. Of those 45, 32% have subsequently been shown to be wrong or exaggerated.39,40”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“The placebo effect is a mixture of expectations and conditioning,36 the idea being that people experience what they expect to (whether positive or negative—a “nocebo”). This effect isn’t just theoretical; in fact, it’s real and surprisingly large. For example, placebos are an effective treatment for 32% of patients with depression (compared to 48% for SSRIs, the most popular type of antidepressants37). And, weird but true, the placebo effect seems to be growing more potent over time.38 As you can imagine, the placebo effect is a major concern for those involved in developing new drugs.”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“Placebo drugs may be active (such as antibiotics given for a viral infection) or inactive (such as a sugar pill). Placebos also may be sham surgeries (some of the most effective placebos!) or clinically unrelated procedures (such as sham acupuncture). In addition, the physician–patient relationship itself may even establish a placebo effect. The placebo effect can work even when patients know they’re receiving a placebo.”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“Premiums for a general internist in Minnesota run around $3,500 per year, while those for OB/GYNs in Long Island, NY cost $225,000 or more.67”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“Those transitions provide a lot of opportunities for things to fall through the cracks, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that following hospital discharge nearly half of hospitalized patients experience at least one medical error in medication continuity, diagnostic workup, or test follow-up.51”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“In fact, in 2011, research found that “US nursing staff, including medical assistants, spent 20.6 hours per physician per week interacting with health plans,” costing $82,975 per physician annually.50”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“In fact, in 2011, research found that “US nursing staff, including medical assistants, spent 20.6 hours per physician per week interacting with health plans,” costing $82,975 per physician annually.50 And this is”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“United States pays a penalty for its extreme fragmentation, financial incentives that favor procedures over comprehensive longitudinal care, and absence of organizational strategy at the individual system level.”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“The U.S. currently spends more than 17% of its national gross domestic product (GDP) on health care, far more than any other country in the world. Health care spending now averages almost $9,000 per American,1 and health care is the fastest growing industry in the country.”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System

“Finally, a goal of this book is to impress a single theme upon the reader: Everything is always more complicated than you think.”
― Elisabeth Askin, The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System