Moneyball, Moneyhealth

An unlikely triumvirate writes on health care in the NY Times - Billy Beane (Oakland A's manager and star of Moneyball), Newt Gingrich and John Kerry laud a statistical approach to health:

IN the past decade, baseball has experienced a data-driven information revolution. Numbers-crunchers now routinely use statistics to put better teams on the field for less money. Our overpriced, underperforming health care system needs a similar revolution.

Eventually they offer some examples:

Similarly, a health care system that is driven by robust comparative clinical evidence will save lives and money. One success story is Cochrane Collaboration, a nonprofit group that evaluates medical research. Cochrane performs systematic, evidence-based reviews of medical literature. In 1992, a Cochrane review found that many women at risk of premature delivery were not getting corticosteroids, which improve the lung function of premature babies.

Based on this evidence, the use of corticosteroids tripled. The result? A nearly 10 percentage point drop in the deaths of low-birth-weight babies and millions of dollars in savings by avoiding the costs of treating complications.

Another example is Intermountain Healthcare, a nonprofit health-care system in Utah, where 80 percent of the care is based on evidence. Treatment data is collected by electronic medical records. The data is analyzed by researchers, and the best practices are then incorporated into the clinical process, resulting in far better quality care at a cost that is one-third less than the national average. (Disclosure: Intermountain Healthcare is a member of Mr. Gingrich’s organization.)

All I know is I want CC Sabathia on the mound for the Yankees next spring.

Comments

[peter]

Slimes endorses BO for POTUS. What a shocker. Reason? McCain used to be a good guy, but now he's racist.

[kim]

I'm afraid Bill James would want to trade me.
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[nextcube]

It was interesting to take a glance at the comments for the article. About half at the time I read it were advocating "single payer" insurance...like that would somehow magically solve the problem!

[sbw]

Oh, I thought you said "single pLayer insurance" and was trying to figure what it would mean if CC Sabathia were the only one on the Yankees covered by the health care policy.

[bad]

This article pissed me off so much it is bound to affect someone's health.

LUN

[Gabriel Sutherland]

Record the time.

How long until metrics are lewdly categorized as racism via numbers?

[E. Nigma]

Objective reality (statistics, metrics, you get the idea): Racist

Subjective reality: Must be judged by trained academics before being considered racist or non-racist. Consult Cornell West and take two aspirin, and call again tomorrow.

[winston churchill]

lies, damned lies, and statistics, I say!

[Jim Ryan]

Consult Cornell West

That's Supreme Court Justice Cornell West, soon enough.

[cathyf]

How long until metrics are lewdly categorized as racism via numbers?

Well, guess what, genetics (which is like ya know slightly correlated with race) has a huge effect on health and proper health care. Black women should start mammograms earlier than white, and asian women can wait until later. Indians (both the Native American kind and the South Asian ones) are at a much higher risk for diabetes, and should be much more aggressively screened than other groups. Blacks are much more likely to have a particular mutation which causes them to overreact to most kinds of pharmaceuticals; caucasians, on the other hand, are far more likely to have a different mutation of the same gene which causes them to underreact. (Both mutations can be deadly...)

So, do you think the next thing we hear is that it's sexist that we don't test men for ovarian cancer or women for prostate cancer?

[SaveFarris]

All I know is I want CC Sabathia on the mound for the Yankees next spring.

No you don't! While CC will be stellar for those first couple years of his soon-to-be gargantuan contract, it's the last 3-4 that's going to make The Kevin Brown Years look Maddux-ian in hindsight.

[pigilito]

In other words, they advocate evidence based medicine. What a breakthrough! Start engraving the the Nobel prizes.

[NS]

SaveFarris,
RIGHT ON. CC is going to cost a ton down the last few years of his contract when its a pretty fair guess that he is going to be washed up in the next 3 years.

No more Kevin Browns, no more Carl Pavano's PLEAAAAAASE.

[Vail Beach]

You aren't getting Sabathia, Tom. Sorry. No Sabathia for you, unless they get rid of the DH in the AL. CC likes to bat, which he'll be doing for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

[kim]

Bob Gibson could've made the Bigs with his hitting.
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[Mike Drew]

Go Cards! I wonder how healthcare's effectiveness is going to be calculate when the illuminati party creates a national healthcare nightmare that Hawaii had to ditch due to cost.