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It's a super interesting topic to explore. Investigating how much bang we get for a buck in medicine is a touchy subject because when I'm ill I want the very be
by teh 11y ago
It's a super interesting topic to explore. Investigating how much bang we get for a buck in medicine is a touchy subject because when I'm ill I want the very best but while I'm fine I'm more willing to consider trade-offs.
Keeping that in mind I think that averaging numbers is not a great representation of doctors impact, the same way average latency isn't a great representation of what users see. What's the 95% percentile of QALYs? E.g. are doctors making one life (e.g. kid with a broken leg as mentioned in a comment here) better for 50 years when 9 people will just never break a leg?
If looking at shifts in distributions the story might (I could not find raw data) look very different.
- jessriedel 11y agoThe point of the article isn't to judge the value of the whole medical system, but rather to make a career choice. That means the relevant question is the value of the marginal doctor, not to try and get a representation of what patients see. We should expect that the marginal doctor is much less useful than the average doctor (i.e., the total benefit of the system divided by the number of doctors), and that furthermore ones expected impact of becoming a doctor is worth even less than the marginal doctor because if you don't go into medicine then someone else only slightly less skilled than you will take your place.
- dghughes 11y agoAnd when people are young and better able to recover from injury or disease the medical system I'm sure is not thought of. When you hit 40 you get a glimpse how fragile we are and how valuable the consistency of health is.