Retailization of Healthcare
by Amyn M Amlani, PhD Healthcare has changed and continues to evolve. Decades ago, a patient would schedule an appointment with their provider based on their insurance coverage, the provider then diagnosed and recommended a treatment protocol, and that protocol would then be executed, followed by a post-treatment visit(s). The recent healthcare model is…
Read More
Utilizing Risk Preference to Quantify Patient Purchase Intent of Audiological Services and Technology
by Amyn M Amlani, PhD A few weeks back, I spent the afternoon shopping for clothes with my 14-year-old daughter. As we made the rounds at the local mall, I was surprised at how elaborate a consumer my daughter had become. Outfits that I assumed were a “slam-dunk” purchase were rejected, and other outfits…
Read More
Metaphor Monologues: The Quest for Effective Treatment Options that Won’t Kill Us
The last monologue post, back in October, presented Plan B — palliative pricing in an unbundled traditional dispensing model–as a spring board for treatment, if not cure, of audiology’s “cost disease.” The disease metaphor was coined by famous economist William Baumol to frame the price problem faced by industries/professions where cost of technology decreases over…
Read More
Cost Effectiveness of Access to Hearing Care: An Analysis of CMS Data
By Barry Freeman, PhD, and Ian Windmill, PhD The past few decades have been dominated by efforts to control healthcare costs while improving affordability and access to quality care. Hearing care is no exception as demonstrated by the reports of the 2016 NASEM Committee on Accessible and Affordable Hearing Health Care for Adults and the…
Read More
The Metaphor Monologues: Treatment Options for Chronic Cost Disease of Hearing Healthcare
This series’ first post introduced William J Baumol’s theory of economic cost disease, manifest in personal service professions’ and industries’ reliance on fixed-time, face-to-face encounters to deliver and perfect the goods. Generally stated, Baumol’s conundrum is that service wages must rise on the back of stalled productivity while manufacturing labor costs rise naturally on the…
Read More