Organising genetic testing

Finally the government has decided to organise genetic counseling and testing. A recent instruction determines who does what. As you may remember I've said several times that government was on permanent holiday on this issue.
In this new instruction, at least two issues are forgotten: the tests that are covered, and the proliferation of sequencing instruments outside the lab. These are not minor issues.
Somebody should decide asap wether a test it is worth to be prescribed. Right now, there are no explicit constraints under the current instruction. And DNA sequencing instruments may be found in many departments under the consideration of research. If there is no clear split between research and care, I can imagine a close future with many messy labs within any hospital. Concentration of knowledge and specialisation provides wider guarantees for quality. Unless there is any mentorship program by clinical laboratories, things will go down the wrong path. Today I'm more worried than yesterday, unless these two issues are fixed.

Changing health behavior (once again)

World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior

Understanding human behavior is one of the main scientific endevours of our current times. As I have explained before, psychology, economics and neurosciences are making great progress in the last decades. Now the annual report by the World Bank puts all this stuff in one publication:

Three principles stand out as providing the direction for new approaches to  understanding behavior and designing and implementing development policy. First, people make most judgments and most choices automatically, not deliberatively: we call this “thinking automatically.” Second, how people act and think often depends on what others around them do and think: we call this “thinking socially.” Third, individuals in a given society share a common perspective on making sense of the world around them and understanding themselves: we call this “thinking with mental models".

In chapter 8 you'll find the application to health issues. A clear warning:

Telling people that there is a way to improve their health is rarely sufficient to change behavior. In general, successful health promotion campaigns engage people emotionally and activate or change social norms as much as they provide information. The message disseminated should be that others will support you or even applaud you if you do it, not just that something is good for you. Successful campaigns address many or most of the following: information, performance, problem solving, social support, materials, and media . A campaign should tell people that a behavior will improve their health (information), demonstrate and model the behavior (performance), reduce barriers to its adoption (problem solving), create a system for supporting people who choose to adopt it (social support), provide the materials necessary to begin adoption (materials), and provide a background of support through in-person, print, radio, television, and other approaches (media).

As you may imagine, this is much more difficult than simply giving information. This is precisely the greatest challenge.

Health across borders

Let's think of two countries artificially separated by political borders. Both have the same income per capita (~27,700 €) and belong to the EU. The first spends 11.1 % of GDP on health (5,513€ per capita, 77.7% public funding), while the second only 8% (3,898€ per capita, 65.8% públic funding).
Both countries have roughly the same life expectancy at birth. Healthy life expectancy at 65 is better in the country that spends less. The number of visits and hospitalizations is also less. Physicians are also paid less, 18% less in general practitioners income, up to 40% in specialists income.
There is only one border between them, an artificial border created by a treaty to end a war that lasted 30 years. This is the case of part of France and Catalonia. While the first can decide over the size of resources devoted to health, the second has no role on it, by now.

PS. Today at COMB, French health reform. I'll be there. #sanitatfrança

The value of vaccination

Valuing vaccination

A PNAS article sets a broader perspective on valuing vaccines. It is of interest in light of current difteria case. My position is clear, no doubt about mandatory vaccination if its cost-effectiveness is proven.
Suggestions from the article:

Three general recommendations flow from our arguments and related synthesis of existing evidence on broad benefits of vaccination. First, many economic evaluation studies of vaccinations should be redone to capture the full benefits generated by the vaccination in question. Second, the evidence to date on the full value of vaccination has been focused on measuring the total social benefits generated. It would also be useful to explore the distribution of vaccination’s benefits among different possible beneficiaries. Third, the primary empirical evidence on broad vaccination benefits will need to be considerably expanded and improved

Framework of vaccination benefits

Perspective		Benefit categories	Definition
Broad	Narrow	Health care cost savings	Savings of medical expenditures because vaccination prevents illness episodes
		Care-related productivity gains	Savings of patient’s and caretaker’s productive time because vaccination avoids the need for care and convalescence
		Outcome-related productivity gains	Increased productivity because vaccination improves physical or mental health
		Behavior-related productivity gains	Vaccination improves health and survival, and may thereby change individual behavior, for example by lowering fertility or increasing investment in education
		Community health externalities	Improved outcomes in unvaccinated community members, e.g., through herd effects or reduction in the rate at which resistance to antibiotics develops
		Community economic externalities	Higher vaccination rates can affect macroeconomic performance and social and political stability
		Risk reduction gains	Gains in welfare because uncertainty in future outcomes is reduced
		Health gains	Utilitarian value of reductions in morbidity and mortality above and beyond their instrumental value for productivity and earnings

 

Reviewing the residency system

Let Me Heal. The Opportunity to Preserve Excellence in American Medicine

We usually emphasize the level of resources when we assess the results of our health system. Institutions matter, we already know that. And if there is one key success factor in our healthcare is the physician's residency program. Training of the physicians under "real" conditions has allowed substantial improvements in health outcomes and the progress of medicine that are difficult to measure specifically. In a new book, Ludmerer provides an excellent review of what it represents to US healthcare:

At the core of the residency system are fundamental educational principles: the assumption of responsibility by residents in patient management, and the importance of providing residents sufficient time to reflect and pursue subjects in depth. Also at the core are the moral principles of residency training: thoroughness, attention to detail, and learning that the needs of patients should come first

And considers that

The current turmoil in health care delivery offers the profession and public the opportunity to redesign medical education and practice in ways that more fully serve the needs of patients, present and future.  The opportunity is there to envision medical education and practice as they should be, not as they are,  and to work toward achieving that end. Such opportunities are to be treasured, not feared. The country will always need good doctors, and the medical profession has little to fear in the changes ahead as long as it remembers that it exists to serve, that the needs of patients come before its own, and that it always must be thinking of improving the future as well as caring for the present.

This call for a redesign of medical education and practice is a real need in our environment. The confusion between the role of  "student" and "employee" is increasing and there is no effort to clarify it.The number of physicians in the program is determined without any clear estimation of demand and rules. A total mess. That's why I consider that we should rethink it from its foundations.

PS. Must see. Documentary: Big Data, citizens under scrutiny.

Integrated care and population health

Population health Systems: Going beyond integrated care

In this blog I have mentioned several times the works by Kindig on population health. If integrated care makes sense, it is because it improves population health. Otherwise we should talk about diferent things.
A new report by the King's Fund sheds some light on several experiences of integrated care. It's worth reading, because you'll see that there is not only one way to achieve the final goal, and the tool -better coordination- has to be suited to the specific setting.

The "recipe":

At a practical level, developing a population health systems perspective requires the following elements as a minimum:
• pooling of data about the population served to identify challenges and needs
• segmentation of the population to enable interventions and support to be targeted appropriately
• pooling of budgets to enable resources to be used flexibly to meet population health needs, at least between health and social care but potentially going much further
• place-based leadership, drawing on skills from different agencies and sectors based on a common vision and strategy
• shared goals for improving health and tackling inequalities based on an analysis of needs and linked to evidence-based interventions
• effective engagement of communities and their assets through third sector organisations and civil society in its different manifestations
• paying for outcomes that require collaboration between different agencies in order to incentivise joint working on population health.

FT on cancer drugs pricing

Being aware of what's going on in marijuana market

Waiting for the opportune moment: the tobacco industry and marijuana legalization

Is it possible to prevent another public health catastrophe similar to tobacco use?. This is the question posed by a recent article in Milbank Quarterly related to marijuana legalization. They explain with complete details how:

Since at least the 1970s, tobacco companies have been interested in marijuana and marijuana legalization as both a potential and a rival product. As public opinion shifted and governments began relaxing laws pertaining to marijuana criminalization, the tobacco companies modified their corporate planning strategies to prepare for future consumer demand.

And their conclusion is clear:

Policymakers and public health advocates must be aware that the tobacco industry or comparable multinational organizations (eg, food and beverage industries) are prepared to enter the marijuana market with the intention of increasing its already widespread use. In order to prevent domination of the market by companies seeking to maximize market size and profits, policymakers should learn from their successes and failures in regulating tobacco.

If this is so, why does nobody care about it?. Why aren't health politicians taking decisions in the right direction?. I strongly suggest them reading this article based on the documents of the tobacco industry and act accordingly.