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Biomedical subjects

B A Weisbrod

Publications and source records attributed to B A Weisbrod.

12 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1993

The supply of volunteer labor: the case of hospitals.

Little is known about the labor market for volunteers, but even less is known about the supply of volunteers to particular industries. This article examines the supply of volunteer labor to one industry, hospitals, and the choices that volunteers make among hospitals with different ownership attributes. Survey data of volunteers at four hospitals located in Madison, Wisconsin, are used to estimate the importance of a number of factors influencing people's willingness to volunteer at hospitals. We found that job opportunities in the labor market and tax rates affect the supply of volunteers. We also found that volunteers are not indifferent to the type of hospital at which they volunteer; a federal government hospital, a nonprofit state-owned teaching hospital, and other nonprofit hospitals were not perfect substitutes in the eyes of individual volunteers in our study.

Career Choice↗
PubMed1992

What does the Consumer Price Index for prescription drugs really measure?

This article examines the conceptually desirable attributes of a fully quality-adjusted prescription drug price index. It provides an understanding of how the Consumer Price Index for prescription drugs and medical supplies treats quality changes in prescription drugs and, in particular, quality changes associated with the introduction of new drugs.

Abstracting and Indexing↗
PubMed1983

A guide to benefit-cost analysis, as seen through a controlled experiment in treating the mentally ill.

The study reported on here is the first benefit-cost analysis of a controlled (random assignment) experiment in the mental health field. It compares, in terms of an unusually wide variety of tangible and intangible forms of benefits and costs, a traditional, hospital-based approach to treating the mentally ill with a nontraditional community-based approach. The research reported here supports the hypothesis that hospitalization of the mentally ill is, except for emergencies, less effective than community-based treatment of approximately equal cost. The research also confirms the hypothesis that the forms taken by the social costs of alternative programs can be so different that it is easy to mistake a change in the form of costs for a change in their level. Finally, this study highlights the fact that benefit-cost analysis, despite advances at both the conceptual and empirical levels, remains a mixture of science and art.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1982

Clinical evaluation vs. economic evaluation: the case of a new drug.

To economically evaluate a new drug or other medical innovation one must assess both the changes in costs and in benefits. Safety and efficacy matter, but so do resources costs and social benefits. This paper evaluates the effects on expenditures of the recent introduction of cimetidine, a drug used in the prevention and treatment of duodenal ulcers. This evaluation is of interest in its own right and also as a "guide" for studying similar effects of other innovations. State Medicaid records are used to test the effects on hospitalization and aggregate medical care expenditures of this new medical innovation. After controlling to the extent possible for potential selection bias, we find that: 1) usage of cimetidine is associated with a lower level of medical care expenditures and fewer days of hospitalization per patient for those duodenal ulcer patients who had zero health care expenditures and zero days of hospitalization during the presample period; an annual cost saving of some $320.00 (20 per cent) per patient is indicated. Further analysis disclosed, however, that this saving was lower for patients with somewhat higher levels of health care expenditures and hospitalization in the presample period, and to some extent was reversed for the patients whose prior year's medical care expenditures and hospitalization were highest.

Cimetidine↗
PubMed1981

Benefit-cost analysis of a controlled experiment: treating the mentally ill.

This study is the first benefit-cost analysis of a controlled (random assignment) experiment in the mental health field. It compares, in terms of an unusually wide variety of "tangible" and "intangible" forms of benefits and costs, a traditional hospital-based approach to treating the mentally ill with a nontraditional community-based approach. The study highlights the very different forms taken by the effects of the alternative therapies. Thus it shows how distorted conclusions can result from a failure of benefit-cost analyses to measure benefits and costs comprehensively; a change in form can be mistaken for a change in level of costs or benefits.

Community Mental Health Services↗
PubMed1980

Alternative to mental hospital treatment. II. Economic benefit-cost analysis.

A cost-benefit analysis should be seen not as a mechanism for deciding mechanically on the allocation of funds and resources among programs but as a structure for weighing advantages and disadvantages (that is, for organizing knowledge). Considering all the forms of benefits and costs that we were able to derive in monetary terms, the experimental program provided both additional benefits and additional costs as compared with the conventional treatment. However, the added benefits, some +1,200 per patient per year, are nearly +400 more per patient per year than the added costs. A number of the forms of benefits and costs that we have measured in quantitative but nonmonetary terms show additional advantages of the community-based experimental program. The generalizability of a single experiment is limited, but the methodologies developed may be useful if their proper role is appreciated.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Research in health economics: a survey.

This paper surveys the types of issues with which health economists have been concerned. It is intended to introduce noneconomists to the kinds of questions that economists have regarded as important. Economists' work in the health economics area may be usefully divided into "positive" and "normative" studies. Positive studies are those designed to describe, or make predictions about, how the health care system, or parts of it, actually operate. Conversely, normative studies are intended to provide statements as to how the health care system should operate. The major areas surveyed include the concept and estimation of the "production function" for health, the distinction between private and social costs, determinants of prices of medical inputs, and benefit-cost analysis.

Cost-Benefit Analysis↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Mixed signals: public policy and the future of health care R&D.

The incentives facing health care research and development (R&D) are influenced by the ambiguous signals sent by private and public insurance decisions affecting the use of, and payments for, existing technologies. Increasingly, that uncertainty is exacerbated by confusion over technologies' impact on health care costs, how costs are to be measured, and the social difficulty of determining medical "need" for purposes of insurance coverage. R&D executives appear to believe that "major" advances are more likely to win such coverage and thus to be profitable. The products that result, therefore, may make the current policy dilemma of cost containment versus service restriction more acute rather than less so. If the aim of policy is to cut costs, innovative remedies are necessary.

Cost Control↗