subject: Productivity in Heart Attack Treatments #5 [print this page] Productivity in Heart Attack Treatments #5
It might seem that the evidence from the U.S. is at odds with the cross-country evidence.Are new heart attack treatments valuable or not? The apparent contradiction can be resolved by noting that average effects can often be different from incremental effects. In particular, evidence suggests that surgical treatments are valuable on average.However, the incremental surgical treatments done in the United States may not reduce death rates.
In other words,
angioplasty and bypass surgery reduce the death rates for some patients by a large amount, and yet for many patients they provided little or no benefit.
Conclusions
What economic reasons explain why the United States spends more on heart attack treatments? Chernew, Gowrisankaran, and Fendrick (2002) find that traditional private insurance may provide incentives for hospitals and physicians to open bypass units and hence provide invasive treatments, although managed health care appears to reduce such incentives.
Furthermore, even though the incremental use of invasive surgeries may not help patients, bypass and angioplasty surgery have transformed the prognosis for heart attack patients.
The U.S. health care system is different from most other industrialized countries in that services are highly decentralized. Decentralization can lead to vast technological advances but also to unnecessary care.The challenge is to design systems that maximize the diffusion of technological advances while minimizing unnecessary care.
A heart attack occurs when your heart does not get enough oxygen, most often happens because of a blocked blood vessel. The part of your heart that does not get enough air then will become damaged or will die. This is why some people experience medical problems after being treated for a heart attack.
To minimize and prevent damage to someone's heart after a heart attack, it is important to quickly diagnose and treat people when they are having heart attack symptoms. Many people feel the symptoms of a heart attack when doing a physical activity.
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