Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9965

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Roehr B
US health experts discuss setting up a centre for effectiveness
BMJ 2007 May 5; 334:(7600):921
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7600/921-a

Abstract:

The possibility of setting up a centre to evaluate the effectiveness of health care in the United States was discussed at a Capitol Hill policy forum in Washington, DC, last week.

The participants at the forum, which was organised by the Alliance for Health Reform and the Commonwealth Fund, thought that such a centre could be useful because of the escalation in spending on health care-in absolute terms and relative to the economy-and because health outcomes in the US were often poorer than those in other industrialised democracies that spent far less on health.

The forum’s moderator, Stuart Guterman, from the policy think tank the Commonwealth Fund, said that the forum’s consensus was that better information and better decisions were needed.

The health economist Gail Wilensky, a senior fellow at the international charity Project Hope, said that other countries are ahead of the US when it comes to evaluating comparative . . .