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| William Matzner, MD, Simi Valley, California |
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal discussed the
continued rise of healthcare cost in the US. By 2025 it is projected that
healthcare costs will be at 18% of the GDP.
Yet research has shown that among the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries, the US has lower life
expectancy at birth and higher mortality for death from respiratory disease,
coronary artery disease and diabetes than the OECD average.
A key question becomes how can we decrease the cost of healthcare
while simultaneously maintaining or improving the effectiveness of treatment
programs? How can an organization health system, ACO, medical group, insurer,
government, measure this so as to compare choices?
This is where Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) can provide
clear metrics to help determine how differing approaches to healthcare
programming and delivery will affect policy change. In chronic diseases such as
Diabetes and Coronary Artery Disease, Markov modeling has shown to be an ideal
method to determine the cost effectiveness of different treatment approaches
over time. One can compare a newer method or medication, or both, to a more
standard treatment and see how the cost effectiveness accumulates over time.
Since CEA uses dollars per Quality Adjusted Life Years
(QALY), one can quantitatively analyze how effective different treatments or
methods are toward the particular disease. This way, policies can be chosen
which not only cost less, but can help patients the most over time. It takes a
subjective evaluation like effectiveness and turns it into a measurable metric
researchers and policy developers can analyze.
The application of
CEA using Markov modeling will provide clearer guidance as to how treatment
policies should be elucidated, and in the long run can help reduce healthcare
costs overall while maintaining and even improving the quality of healthcare
delivery and outcomes. It can also be used to quantitatively monitor the
effectiveness of new policies once implemented.
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.
