Author: Avalon Health Economics LLC

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program is an incentive-based repayment plan linked to the quality of care hospitals provide to Medicare patients. With VBP, hospitals are held accountable for both the quality and cost of their services, and must reach specified performance measures to be rewarded. CMS continues to...

In recent years there has been renewed attention devoted to coordination of medical care services across the continuum of care, particularly in the area of prevention, monitoring, diagnostics, and disease management. This is not entirely new to the U.S. In the early 1990s, as managed care began to widen its reach and increase market share,...

Joining us recently is Megan Modic, who will provide research assistance on a variety of projects. Ms. Modic is currently earning her Bachelor’s degree in Honors Economics and Environmental Science at Drew University, in Madison, NJ, where she is President of The Fund, a student run investment portfolio.

According to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, the estimated annual costs of health care fraud in the U.S. are more than $70 billion, or about 3% of total national health care expenditures. This is an amount large enough to wipe out the savings from many...

Avalon CEO John Schneider spoke at the 6th Annual Latin American & Canada Clinical Laboratory Symposium, Cartagena, Columbia, October 16th and 17th. The title of his talk was “Economics of Cancer Biomarkers: Cost Effectiveness of HE4 in Clinical Decision Making Dr. Schneider’s presentation focused on a conceptual framework for exploring the economic aspects of cancer...

Avalon Health Economics CEO John Schneider presented at the Truck Safety and Litigation Seminar hosted by Marcello & Kivisto LLC law firm in April 2013. In his presentation Dr. Schneider spoke about motor carrier liability cases involving large medical losses, and how Avalon Health Economics uses a common health economics methodology to calculate the “reasonable...

Avalon Health Economics is happy to announce the addition of two new consultants to our panel. Jeff Kamil, MD, joins us in the area of U.S. market access and reimbursement. Jeff worked with John Schneider, Avalon’s CEO, several years ago when John was Director of Research at the California Association of Health Plans. Dr. Kamil...

During the health reform discussions leading up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), there was a lot of talk about the costs of health care services in the U.S. Some argued that the legislation did not go far enough in controlling the underlying upward trends in health care costs, while others argued...

Women make about 80% of the health-care decisions for their families, utilize more health care than men, and are the more likely to be the care givers when a family member becomes sick. Females of all ages accounted for 60% of all expenses incurred at doctors’ offices in 2004. According to the Bureau of Labor...

During the recent debates over the Affordable Care Act (“ACA,” or Obamacare) a commonly raised issue was that U.S. health care does not offer much in the way of “value for money.” The argument, generally, is that we spend a lot more in the U.S. relative to comparable countries but in turn receive poor quality...