A post by Scott Hensley on the NPR Health Blog yesterday has some good food for thought in the comparative effectiveness debate: what to do when comparative effectiveness studies show no statistically significant difference between treatments.
The post notes that insurance coverage will be a factor in these decisions, but that:
“in the end, it might be you and your gut feeling.”
In one of this blog’s prior posts, I noted that it will be hard to distinguish between treatments that show different effectiveness because of personal differences between patients and those that would show different results even if the patients were identical.
Hensley’s post illustrates that no matter how much data we gather, there will be gray areas where doctors and patients have to make subjective calls. I hope payors will be extremely cautious about second-guessing these decisions. Tie goes to the patient.
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.