Evidence-Based to Value-Based Medicine
Posted on: Friday, 10 June 2005, 03:00 CDT
Evidence-Based to Value-Based Medicine Brown MM, Brown GC, Sharma S, eds. 339 pages. Chicago: AMA; 2005. $64.95. ISBN 1579476252. Order at www.amapress.com.
Field of medicine: Evidence-based medicine and value-based medicine.
Format: Softcover book.
Audience: Physicians, health care researchers, health policymakers, managers, and payers of health care.
Purpose: To provide physicians with information on value-based medicine to help them understand quality-of-life variables, deliver high-quality care, integrate patient values with best evidence, and estimate clinical outcomes using health care economics.
Content: The book consists of 21 chapters divided into 4 parts. Part 1 (chapters 1 through 3) provides background information, defines value-based medicine, and includes information on previous barriers to practicing value-based medicine, such as the lack of standardization of parameters to perform cost-utility studies and health care economics emphasizing health care expenditure in the United States. Part 2 (chapter 4) provides a traditional description of evidencebased medicine, summarizing study decisions, levels of evidence, and paucity of value measurement in most studies. Part 3 (chapters 5 through 14) provides details on the definition of ideal quality-of-life instruments, types of quality-of-life instruments (function-based vs. preference-based), estimation of value and costs, and theories of decision analysis. Part 4 (chapters 15 through 21) provides insight into value-based medicine, with details on performing cost-utility analysis with scenarios depicting the application of value-based medicine in nursing care and pharmacoeconomics.
Highlights: This book fills a void in applying evidence-based medicine to patients. It explains the value of treatment, provides comprehensive descriptions of tools to measure quality of life, and compares the efficacy of different treatments using cost-utility measures. The chapters are well written, with subheadings, highlighted key points, and a summary of core concepts.
Limitations: The value of treatment may vary among patients, illness severity (mild vs. severe), communities, and countries. Variability in definition of cost-utility studies in literature and quality-of-life instruments makes application of value-based medicine cumbersome at the bedside and in clinics.
Related reading: Jenicek and Hitchcock's Evidence-based Practice: Logic and Critical Thinking (AMA, 2005) introduces the use of logic and critical thinking in reading and writing scientific articles. Meyer's Essential Evidence-based Medicine (Cambridge Univ Pr, 2004) provides excellent narrative reviews of evidence-based medicine, with separate chapters dedicated to the history of evidence-based medicine, risk assessment, basic statistics, and decision analysis. This book has an exhaustive bibliography of relevant evidence-based medicine literature, textbooks, and Web sites.
Reviewer: Amit K. Ghosh, MD, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.
Copyright American College of Physicians Jun 7, 2005
Source: Annals of Internal Medicine
Related Articles
- Probiotics May Benefit Health and Quality of Life of Older People
- Most Women With HIV and Their Health Care Providers Have Not Discussed How HIV Might Affect Them Differently Than Men
- Aetna to Enable Faster Payments Between Members and Health Care Providers
- Behavioral Health Clients to Benefit From New Managed Care Provider
- Aetna Launches Tools to Improve Cross-Cultural Awareness, Communication Among Health Care Providers
- A Year After Health Accord Signed, Care Providers Still Waiting for Results
- New Study Shows Significant Improvements in Health-Related Quality-of-Life Measures in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Patients Using SPIRIVA(R) HandiHaler(R)
- Decision Making in Health and Medicine. Integrating Evidence and Values
- Primary Care Providers' Attitudes Toward Prostate Cancer Risk Factors at a Veterans Affairs Health Care Facility
- Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients With Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension*
 |
 |
User Comments (0)
RSS Feeds