Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Random charts - FDA


Source: The FDA’s Drug Pricing Strategy: What’s New?

"...To help track the FDA’s progress in implementing its strategy, we’ve created a timeline of the major announcements and regulatory actions the agency has taken to encourage a competitive market for biologic drugs, address drug shortages and abuses of the FDA’s citizen petition process, and streamline the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) program, which aims to promote timelier competition from generic drug manufacturers. We’ll be updating this periodically. In a future post, we’ll discuss additional steps the agency and Congress could take to lower drug prices..."

Sunday, February 17, 2019

Random charts - Yemen (war crimes)

 

Source: The Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War: Aerial bombardment and food war (23-pg PDF)

"If one places the damage to the resources of food producers (farmers, herders, and fishers) alongside the targeting of food processing, storage and transport in urban areas and the wider economic war, there is strong evidence that Coalition strategy has aimed to destroy food production and distribution in the areas under the control of Sanʿaʾ. As described above, from the autumn of 2016, economic war has com-pounded physical destruction to create a mass failure in basic livelihoods. Deliberate destruction of family farming and artisanal fishing is a war crime. Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the United Kingdom and France are signatories to the 1977 Protocol I additional to the Geneva Conventions, which gives the fullest statement in International Humanitarian Law on the protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population. 

If the Coalition war in Yemen is not to mark the erasure of legal referent in war, other forces and institutions will need to call into question the blanket ‘legitimacy’ accorded the Coalition to date by the world’s highest legal body, the UN Security Council. If UN Security Council resolution 2417 (24 May 2018), condemning starvation of civilians in wartime, is to be meaningful, then it is necessary for the UNSC and its member states to halt such crimes in Yemen, to investigate them, and to call to account those responsible for perpetrating them."

Random charts/pictures - Chernobyl

 
 
 

Source: Chernobyl: The end of a three-decade experiment

 
 
 

Source: Cameras reveal the secret lives of Chernobyl's wildlife

Saturday, February 9, 2019

Random charts - cost-shifting

 
 
 

"Conclusion: This report reviews the health care cost landscape in Colorado and introduces new research by the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing that analyzes the reasons behind rising hospital costs, which comprise the largest portion of health care spend.119This report focuses on the cost shift to commercial payers.120The Department concludes that while the 2009 Colorado Health Care Affordability Act (CHCAA) -and subsequent 2017 Colorado Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise (CHASE) Act, and the federal 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) led to increased Medicaid payments to hospitals, fewer uninsured, less bad debt and less charity-care write-of f for hospitals, these policies did not result in a reduction in hospital cost shift to other payers to cover the cost of uncompensated care as expected. Instead, prices continue to rise for non-governmental payers while hospital costs and margins also rise..."

Random charts - healthcare IT


Source: Digital and AI are top priorities in 2019 as EHR investments continue to dominate (29-page PDF)

Friday, February 8, 2019

Random charts - outpatient spend



"The industry-wide shift from inpatient to outpatient care is well documented by healthcare providers (HCPs) and industry experts. Advancements in hospital technology and treatments are enabling a greater number of patients to seek effective care without being admitted. This trend is helping to lower overall care costs, improve patient outcomes, and reduce unnecessary admissions. According to our hospital financial data, outpatient treatment accounted for nearly 57 percent of hospital net patient revenue in 2017..."

Friday, February 1, 2019

Random charts - boundaries



"We have shown that groups that are not well-mixed but are geographically separated by natural or political boundaries into autonomous domains are peaceful in both Switzerland and the former Yugoslavia. Our work clarifies the ambiguities of mixed languages and religions in Swiss cantons by showing that in most cases the natural geography of the populations conspires to lead to a low level of violence, so that additional boundaries were not necessary; where they were needed, as in Graubunden, they were established. The highest calculated propensity to violence is between linguistic groups in the northern part of the canton of Bern, where historically unresolved real world tensions actually exist. Our analysis indicates that both administrative and natural barriers can play a significant role in mitigating conflict between religious and linguistic groups. Historical evidence suggests that for religious groups the boundaries in Switzerland were created to provide autonomy to a group with a shared identity and avoid conflict among multiple groups. Ongoing efforts to reduce tensions in Bern include introducing new political boundaries. The many political, social and economic factors that play roles in reducing violence build on a strong foundation of geographical borders. Our analysis suggests that when partition within a country is viewed as an acceptable form of conflict mitigation, such partition can give rise to highly stable coexistence and peace."