Tag: health costs

Reading of the Week: Stressed & Expensive – the Chiu et al. Study on the Health-Care Costs of Distress and Depression

September 21, 2017 /

From the Editor

He isn’t able to work. He often can’t get out of bed. His partner is beside herself. And his diabetic management is poor.

He’s the sort of patient who we see often – in specialist offices (like mine) and in family medicine clinics, and also in emergency departments and on hospital wards. His depression is affecting his life, his family, his workplace – and, yes, his health. Here’s a quick question: how much higher are his health-care costs than those who don’t struggle with depression?

In this week’s selection, we look at a new paper by Maria Chiu et al., considering the costs of depression and distress.

business-comment_01_temp-1382010303-525fcdbf-620x348Distress and depression: Painful to patients – and costly to the system?

In this Reading, we review the paper, and consider the larger context.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Cost and Mental Illness

June 2, 2016 /

From the Editor

When we think about mental illness, we often think about loss – loss of friendships, loss of opportunities, and, in some cases, loss of life.

From a societal perspective, mental illness is often accompanied by another loss: economic.

Here are two papers that consider the long economic shadow cast by mental illness.

In the first, the authors consider mental illness and high-use consumers of health care. Specifically, the paper asks a simple if important question: looking at people who heavily use the health-care system, what percentage have mental health and addiction problems? The second paper, which draws on US data, calculates the cost of treating mental health disorders compared to other disorders.

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Reading of the Week: Choosing Wisely and Psychiatry

June 11, 2015 /

The routine use of antipsychotics, like Zyprexa (olanzapine) and Seroquel (quetiapine), should not be used to treat primary insomnia in children, adults or the elderly, say Canadian psychiatrists. This information is part of a series of 13 evidence-based recommendations made by the Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA) and its working group partners, the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (CACAP) and the Canadian Academy of Geriatric Psychiatry (CAGP), for the Choosing Wisely Canada campaign.

Choosing Wisely Canada (CWC) is a campaign to help physicians and patients engage in conversations about unnecessary tests, treatments and procedures, and to help physicians and patients make smart and effective choices to ensure high-quality care.

So begins the press release announcing the 13 recommendations made jointly by these three bodies as part of Choosing Wisely Canada.

The full list is this week’s Reading, and “Thirteen Things Physicians and Patients Should Question” can be found here:

http://www.choosingwiselycanada.org/recommendations/psychiatry/

Choosing Wisely is a good campaign – thoughtfully done and executed. It ultimately aims to better patient care. It’s also important within the context of the larger system itself. Continue reading