Earlier this month I attended my first Forbes Healthcare Summit, where the stated goal for this year was to “figure out how to create the kind of care we know we deserve.” The event offered a unique gathering of pharmaceutical, health care and biotechnology chief executives engaged in frank discussions
We have all heard many times about how much the US spends on health care each year. But let’s hear it again . . . because it is staggering: According to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), in 2013, the national health expenditure (NHE) grew to $2.9 trillion. That
To prepare for the data challenges of 2015 and beyond, health care fraud, waste and abuse investigative units (government funded and commercial insurance plans, alike) need a data management infrastructure that provides access to data across programs, products and channels. This goes well beyond sorting and filtering small sets of
More and more of my friends seem to be eating less and less meat, for various reasons (such as religious, health, social conscience, weight loss, personal preference, cost savings, etc). So I thought I would put together a graph to help them find alternate sources of protein. While searching for
Big data is here to stay, whether we like it or not. Regardless of how you feel about it, it can help solve problems which simply could not be addressed without big data and advanced analytics. One area in which big data and analytics can provide huge benefits is the medical arena. In a recent
Healthcare IT News recently published an article on 18 health technologies poised for big growth, a list culled from a HIMSS database. The database is used to track an extensive list of technology products that have seen growth of 4-10 percent since 2010, but have not yet reached a 70
The Wall Street Journal recently published a study of the top 17 medical areas (or body parts) that venture capitalist investments are likely to benefit. They used graphs to summarize the results, but "the graph guy" in me just couldn't resist trying to improve them. Did my improvements help? -
When I was a kid, I remember a motivational poster on my dentist's wall that said "You don't have to brush all your teeth -- only the ones you want to keep." That poster really made me think, and brush my teeth! And now that I'm a data-analyst adult, I think
Nope - we're not digging up mummies in pyramids and analyzing the gender - this blog is about population pyramid charts and "digging into data"! But since the title might have lured in some pyramid fans, here's a picture of my friend Angela posing beside a pyramid - pretty cool, eh?!?
A recent study by Bai & Anderson has found that some hospitals charge 10x (ie, 1000%) higher than the standard rates set by Medicare. Many news agencies have posted the list of the 50 US hospitals that have the highest markup. But I am more visually oriented, so of course I used SAS
Have you ever been bitten by a mosquito? What are the odds it carried the West Nile virus? ... Perhaps a lot higher than you thought! Here's a picture of a mosquito that kept 'bugging' me around my computer desk at home - good riddance, I say!
I guess most of us have a morbid curiosity about how we're going to die ... which is probably why Francis Boscoe's Causes of Death map went viral (no pun intended, of course!). This blog post shows how to create such a map... But first, to lighten up the mood a bit
According to Time Magazine, the next Ebola outbreak will cost the World Bank in excess of $30 billion dollars. In 2014, America spent in excess of $1.16 million dollars to treat two victims of the dreaded disease. While Ebola and other microorganisms of the deadly variety are scary creatures there
We’ve all heard the old saw, “If you torture data long enough, eventually it will confess to something.” But when it comes to spurring real change, how about ditching the dungeon-master act and thinking like a venture capitalist instead? Wouldn’t that pay bigger dividends? That was the tip from Ravi
Smoking is an addictive habit that can kill you - if you don't believe me, check out the infographic in this blog post. Recently a friend of mine was on the episode of the Dr. Phil show that focused on "quitting smoking." Here's a picture of Traci with Dr. Phil
Data about the monthly wait times at VA facilities in the US are now available, but it's a bit overwhelming to try to analyze them in tabular form - plotting the data on a map made it a lot easier!... Here in the US, when our soldiers finish their commitment in
Has this year's flu been better or worse than you thought it would be? There are a lot of factors that help determine whether or not you're likely to get the flu. Is there a bad strain going around? Did the flu vaccine target the right strain? Did you get
After the legalization of recreational marijuana use in Colorado in 2012, it has been a much more frequent news topic than before - even from a data analysis perspective... I was recently looking for 'interesting' data to analyze with SAS, and I noticed some articles about the increasing potency of marijuana in
Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1979, after an extensive vaccination campaign in the 19th and 20th centuries. This blog post contains a visual analysis of the final years of this disease in the US ... In my previous blog post, I imitated and improved infectious disease graphs from a recent Wall
The Wall Street Journal recently published some graphs about seven infectious diseases, and I tried using SAS to improve the graphs ... it's a veritable infectious disease (graph) bake-off! Let's start with Measles ... here's a screen-capture of WSJ's measles graph: In general, their graph is eye-catching, and I learned a lot
To get into the mood for this blog post, you should first listen to the music video of The Who singing My Generation... I guess everybody has 'their generation' and here in the U.S. the most famous generation has been the Baby Boomers. Many companies have tried to design products they
Historically healthcare has been most ‘self’ motivated to improve its ‘cost containment’ processes and methods. This is evident from the significant gap that exists between the technology and process in finance versus healthcare. Many healthcare organizations (either government or commercial) are not ‘profit’ oriented – take the Blues for example,
Today’s healthcare system is under tremendous pressure to reduce overall costs without losing track of the patient. Legislative changes and challenging economic realities make it increasingly difficult to deliver both improved outcomes and cost savings for the most complex patients. The Physicians Pharmacy Alliance (PPA) recognizes the changing healthcare landscape
On a cold and wet December morning in 2008, at approximately 1:30 AM, I pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned supermarket in Arlington, TX. With sleet pelleting my windshield, I saw three additional sets of headlights enter into the parking lot from different directions. All three cars converged
For most people, this time of year means celebrating cherished, personal traditions… helping those less fortunate…flocking to stores in droves…the company holiday party… For the SAS Security Intelligence team, it means identity theft…benefits fraud…unemployment insurance fraud...insider threats. Why? Because next week is International Fraud Awareness Week! And we’re celebrating by
It's time for a fall fraud roundup. Bad deeds swirl around like so many dry leaves, and I'd like to highlight a few of them this week. It can happen anywhere, even in sports, and no, I'm not picking on those shoplifting Dallas Cowboys here. An MLS referee was suspended for workers' compensation
SAS software has long been used to help analyze 'risk' - what about using it to help determine your risk of being attacked by a vampire?!? On a previous Halloween, I was the victim of a Vampire attack. Here's the photographic proof... Being the most common O+ blood type, I
In a previous blog post, I showed how to layer colored areas on a SAS map to show both countries, and the areas within countries that had cases of Ebola. But as the Ebola epidemic has spread, more data has become available, and in this blog I show how to
Did you hear that Prince William is getting a new job? Next year, he’ll fly emergency helicopters for the East Anglian Air Ambulance. The prince, who’ll donate his salary to charity, called his new gig “one of the finest forms of public service.” The Duke of Cambridge won’t get any
If you're a really big company, with many locations around the country, how do you keep track of all that? ... With a great map, of course! I recently read a CNN article about the Community Health Systems network being hacked - exposing the names, Social Security numbers, physical addresses, birthdays
