McAllen, Texas is the mother ship for the Medicare National Bank. A culture of care that is bankrupting our country. Or so we think. A reanalysis of Gawande's research was done by the ladies and gents over at the Health Care Blog analyzed the data. And came to a very different conclusion.
They did some great analysis of the data to come to these conclusions. They showed that the expenditures out of McAllen in patients without diabetes, heart disease or heart failure was not out of the ordinary.
My own analysis? Before I could conclude that an over treat culture of care in McAllen doesn't exist, I would like to see the data, not on patients without these three diseases, but rather expenditure data on patients WITH diabetes, heart failure and heart disease and corrected for poor status (who's poor health is directly related to smoking status). These are the patients for which medical care is expensive. These are the proceduralized patients. Telling me that healthy folks in McAllen cost no more than healthy folks in Colorado doesn't mean anything. Tell me a rich diabetic with heart failure and a history of MI costs more in McAllen than in Colorado. Now, that's meaningful information.
0 Outbursts:
Post a Comment
By Posting Here I Promise To Do Something Nice For Someone Today