The Incidental Economist

Health economists study the economic determinants of health. They also analyze how health care resources are utilized and allocated, and how health care policies and quality of care can be improved. In this episode, we discuss what exactly a healthcare system would look like if these professionals were calling all the shots.

This video was adapted from a column Austin wrote for the Upshot. Links to sources can be found there.

If you’ve contracted toxoplasmosis from your cat, you may be more likely to take risks. So why not take the plunge and listen to this podcast? As Halloween approaches, Bill Sullivan, PhD, joins the Healthcare Triage podcast to share his research on the “zombifying” parasite toxoplasma gondii, and the science behind monster legends like vampires, werewolves […]

Are you an accomplished pediatrics researcher, well-established in her or his career, who has considerable experience leading researchers and research teams and executing programmatic initiatives? Do you have a commitment to policy-relevant research, and are you energized by the possibilities of cultivating and sustaining productive relationships with faculty and staff, external research collaborators, funders, operational […]

Cost-sharing is the practice of making individuals responsible for part of their health insurance costs beyond the monthly premiums they pay for health insurance – think things like deductibles and copayments. The practice is meant to inspire more thoughtful choices among consumers when it comes to healthcare decisions. However, the choices it inspires can often […]

Health Services Research (HSR) and The John A. Hartford Foundation are partnering to publish a Special Issue on Age-Friendly Health Systems. Abstract proposals are due November 22, 2021. A key challenge facing health systems in the United States and around the world is how to best design services to provide care to a growing population of older adults […]

Last semester, I developed a new class at the University of Michigan called Regulating Contagion: Pandemics and Disease in U.S. Legal History (syllabus here). Drawing partly on a seminar I co-taught back in 2015, and partly on work as special counsel to Governor Whitmer on her COVID-19 response, the class advanced three big ideas. First: […]

Keto diets have been used to manage a variety of health conditions, most notably epilepsy. More recently, there has been burgeoning interest in whether keto diets may be beneficial to other chronic diseases, in particular diabetes.

Cancer is a transformative experience. You ask, “Transformative how?” and I can’t answer in one post. But I can start by catching you up on my story. I was diagnosed with throat cancer in July of 2020. Thirty-five sessions of radiotherapy followed. Soon after, though, the pain surrounding my tumour began to increase. Several scans […]

This video was adapted from a column Austin wrote for the Upshot. Links to sources can be found there.    

Medical scribes join doctors, nurses, and other providers in patient visits to help ease administrative burdens on providers by documenting visits and entering orders, allowing the provider to spend more time focusing on the patient instead of the electronic health record. A new pilot is testing if medical scribes would be an asset to VHA facilities.