OBJECTIVES To evaluate the national regulatory, health technology assessment (HTA), and reimbursement pathways for public health care in Australia, Canada, England, and Scotland, to compare initial Canadian national HTA recommendations with the initial decisions of the other HTA agencies, and to identify factors for differing national HTA recommendations between the four HTA agencies. METHODS...

BACKGROUND Cubital tunnel syndrome (CUT) is the second most common peripheral neuropathy with an annual incidence of 24.7 per 100 000, affecting nearly twice as many men as women. With increasing focus on cost-effectiveness and cost-containment in medicine, a critical understanding of utilization of health care resources for open and endoscopic approaches for cubital tunnel release is of value....

Medicaid programs throughout the United States are moving away from fee-for-service medicine and increasingly towards managed care models in attempts to control rising health care costs. This study examines the participation of physicians in Arizona's prepaid, managed care Medicaid program, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS). In particular, it considers the reasons that ph...

Among the many healthcare trends that bear watching, coverage, reimbursement, and evolving medical technologies are at the top of the list. Some employers are moving away from a defined benefit model, e.g., benefits provided by an employer’s health plan, and toward a defined contribution model, e.g., employees receive a fixed amount of money to buy medical coverage from an online insurance mark...

Transplantation is a widely accepted and successful life-saving treatment for hundreds of thousands patients. However, transplant medicine still faces number obstacles. One the most significant large disparity between donors recipients growing need re-transplantation. In last two decades, improvement organization national transplantation program in Croatia have resulted steadily increasing dono...

OBJECTIVE The regulatory and reimbursement environment for PET has changed significantly over the past several years. The Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) findings of the safety and efficacy of key PET drugs have been published, as well as guidelines for the applications to produce PET drugs. In addition, the national Medicare coverage policy for PET has been expanded, most recently with ad...

Although the total number of new drugs (new chemical entities) approved has gradually decreased over the past decade, the proportion that are expensive biological agents has grown dramatically. In particular, the number of new biological agents registered for treating cancer—so called targeted therapies or personalised medicine—is increasing, and the costs of these treatments are rising too, wi...

Positron emission tomography (PET) has contributed significantly to advancing our understanding of heart physiology and pathophysiology for more than 25 years. Despite its clear success in research applications, the restricted availability of this technology, its increased cost, and limited data supporting its use and reimbursement have all contributed to the relatively limited clinical accepta...

Critics may argue that RDMS certification is merely a technician “merit badge.” However, there are a number of valid counterarguments to this claim. First, there are qualifying pathways for RDMS or Registered Diagnostic Cardiac Sonographer certification that are provided specifically for physicians. One new vascular sonography certification separate from RDMS is available only to physicians. Se...

This article defines and describes best practices for the academic and business community to generate evidence of clinical utility for cancer molecular diagnostic assays. Beyond analytical and clinical validation, successful demonstration of clinical utility involves developing sufficient evidence to demonstrate that a diagnostic test results in an improvement in patient outcomes. This discussi...