LDI Research Seminar with Carrie Colla, PhD

Dr. Colla is Assistant Professor at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Dartmouth Medical School. She is a health economist specializing in health insurance markets, insurance benefit design, provider payment, and the care and needs of the elderly. Dr. Colla’s research examines: effects of changes in Medicare reimbursement for physicians and institutional providers; costs, use, and outcomes of post-acute care; labor market effects of health insurance expansions; and employer health benefit choices under a pay-or-play mandate.

Paper Abstract:
There is considerable disagreement over the prevalence and importance of “overuse” of ineffective and expensive treatments, and the “underuse” of valuable and often inexpensive health care. I first consider the challenges of measuring overuse in available data where nuanced clinical definitions are critical to judging whether the treatment is beneficial or not. In particular, I focus on the Choosing Wisely campaign initiated by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation, in which participating physician specialty societies have each identified practices that are viewed as overuse. Using a physician survey, I can better understand the causes of why doctors continue to use treatments deemed unwise, and the extent to which these treatments vary across regions, hospitals, and between the Medicare and commercially insured populations. Finally, I discuss ongoing research that uses a sample of nearly one million Medicare heart attack patients to quantify the role of overuse and underuse in explaining existing hospital variations in spending and health outcomes.
 

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Co-sponsored by Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy