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| Dr. William Matzner, Simi Valley, California |
The healthcare delivery environment has changed
dramatically over the last several years. Most notably is the emphasis on
appropriate limitation of medical resources to those patients that truly
require it by set criteria. Healthcare organizations now face unique challenges
in this new environment to deliver appropriate and quality healthcare yet
remain profitable. How can they determine if what they are doing is
economically beneficial? Should they continue the same programs and how much
money should they devote to each program to remain profitable? How can they
determine this analytically?
This is a perfect scenario where cost effectiveness
analysis (CEA) can provide the appropriate guidelines to make good economic
decisions. In CEA, one sets up a decision tree with two or more scenarios to
compare which scenario (branch) is the best economically. CEA also has the added advantage of building
the effectiveness of each decision branch into the model.
For example, suppose that your organization has a CHF
disease management program as a supplement to the physician’s offices to help
manage these chronically ill patients. A CEA decision tree can compare the
costs to maintain CHF patients without the program, versus with the program. If
the patients are clinically better with the program, this can be built into the
model using Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY). A CEA model can tell how much
savings one program can bring versus another program or no program at all. This
information can help in not only deciding whether to keep such a program, but
also how much one can invest in the program for economic benefit to the
healthcare organization. This can be critical to budgeting for subsequent
years.
This is only one
example of how CEA can help healthcare organizations in medical decision making
and budgeting of existing healthcare programs.
About William L.
Matzner, M.D., PhD, FACP
Dr.
William Matzner works in the area of healthcare economics consulting at
Healthcare Analytics, LLC, in California. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from
Stanford University. He received his M.D. with Honors from Baylor College of
Medicine. In 1988, he was the Solomon Scholar for Resident Research at Cedar
Sinai Medical Center. Dr. Matzner subsequently was awarded a PhD in Neuro
Economics from Claremont Graduate University. He is board certified in Internal
Medicine and Palliative Medicine. He has researched and published extensively
on the issue of reproduction and immunology in medical literature. He has been
in private practice since 1989, specializing in Reproductive Immunology and
Internal medicine.
Website: https://drwilliammatzner.com
Consulting Website: https://healthcareanalytics.biz
News: https://hippocratesguild.com/dr-william-matzner News: https://medicogazette.com/dr-william-matzner
William Matzner, MD (Simi Valley, California), has been practicing medicine since 1989, Internal Medicine and Reproductive Immunology. M.D. with Honors from Baylor College of Medicine.
