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The high cost of cancer medicines is a public health challenge. Policy makers in the US and Europe are debating reforms to drug pricing that would cover both the prices of new medicines when entering the market and price increases after they are launched.OBJECTIVE To assess launch prices, postlaunch price changes, and clinical benefit of cancer drugs in the US compared with 3 European countries (England, Germany, and Switzerland). DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTSThis economic evaluation identified all new drugs that were approved for use in the US, England, Germany, and Switzerland with initial indications for treatment of adult solid tumor and hematologic cancers. Analysis included drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2019, and by the European Medicines Agency and Swissmedic until December 31, 2019. Prices were adjusted for currency and inflation. Clinical benefit of drugs indicated for solid tumors was assessed using the American Society of Clinical Oncology Value Framework and European Society for Medical Oncology Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale. Using Spearman rank correlation coefficients, correlations between clinical benefit and launch prices and postlaunch price changes for each country were evaluated.MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Launch prices, postlaunch price changes, and clinical benefit of cancer drugs. RESULTSThe cohort included 65 drugs: 47 (72%) approved for solid tumors and 18 (28%) for hematologic cancers. In all countries, the lowest median monthly treatment costs at launch

The positive assessment of the module indicates the successful introduction of the topics of telemedicine and e-health to medical students at the University of Zurich. Throughout the course, the students gained confidence and basic skills.

AimsTo estimate the prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and related risk factors in people in opioid agonist treatment (OAT), to compare airflow limitation severity and age‐specific COPD prevalence rates with those in the general population, and to assess the OAT patients’ willingness to adopt life‐style changes and to use therapeutic offers for COPD management.DesignCross‐sectional study in a random sample of OAT patients.SettingOut‐patient centres for substance addiction medicine in Zurich, Switzerland.ParticipantsA total of 125 participants, recruited from November 2016 to April 2017 through invitation letters followed by phone or personal contact.MeasurementsStandardized questionnaires about drug use, smoking habits and medical history, completed during face‐to‐face interviews or from medical records. Spirometry without and—depending on the result—with bronchodilation.FindingsAlmost one‐third [30.3%; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 22.6–39.0%] of the 119 participants with valid spirometry tests were diagnosed with COPD. Among males aged 30–59 years, the age‐adjusted prevalence of at least moderate airflow limitation (GOLD grade ≥ 2) was 2.4 (95% CI = 1.3–4.4) times as high as in the ever‐smoking Swiss population in the same age group. Smoking tobacco (92.0%) and substance inhalation (cannabis = 97.6%, cocaine = 69.6%, heroin = 68.0%) were highly prevalent among all participants. The participants expressed considerable interest in life‐style changes and use of therapeutic offers for COPD management, with smoking cessation being least (20.2% of tobacco smokers interested) and pharmacological treatment to alleviate COPD symptoms most popular.ConclusionsIn Switzerland, COPD prevalence and multiple risk factors for COPD appear to be high among people in OAT compared with the general population. Individuals in OAT appear to develop COPD at a younger average age compared with the general population and are open to life‐style changes and other COPD management approaches.

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BackgroundIn randomised controlled trials with only few randomisation units, treatment allocation may be challenging if balanced distributions of many covariates or baseline outcome measures are desired across all treatment groups. Both traditional approaches, stratified randomisation and allocation by minimisation, have their own limitations. A third method for achieving balance consists of randomly choosing from a preselected list of sufficiently balanced allocations. As with minimisation, this method requires that heterogeneity between treatment groups is measured by specified imbalance metrics. Although certain imbalance measures are more commonly used than others, to the author's knowledge there is no generally accepted “gold standard”, neither for categorical and even less so for continuous variables.MethodsAn intuitive and easily accessible web-based software tool was developed which allows for balancing multiple variables of different types and using various imbalance metrics. Different metrics were compared in a simulation study.ResultsUsing simulated data, it could be shown that for categorical variables, χ2-based imbalance measures seem to be viable alternatives to the established “quadratic imbalance” metric. For continuous variables, using the area between the empirical cumulative distribution functions or the largest difference in the three pairs of quartiles is recommended to measure imbalance. Another imbalance metric suggested in the literature for continuous variables, the (symmetrised) Kullback-Leibler divergence, should be used with caution.ConclusionThe Shiny Balancer offers the possibility to visually explore the balancing properties of several well established or newly suggested imbalance metrics, and its use is particularly advocated in clinical studies with few randomisation units, as it is typically the case in cluster randomised trials.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12874-018-0551-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

BackgroundInappropriate medication and polypharmacy increase morbidity, hospitalisation rate, costs and mortality in multimorbid patients. At hospital discharge of elderly patients, polypharmacy is often even more pronounced than at admission. However, the optimal discharge strategy in view of sustained medication appropriateness remains unclear. In particular, unreflectingly switching back to the pre-hospitalisation medication must be avoided. Therefore, both the patients and the follow-up physicians should be involved in the discharge process. In this study, we aim to test whether a brief medication review which takes the patients’ priorities into account, combined with a standardised communication strategy at hospital discharge, leads to sustained medication appropriateness and extends readmission times among elderly multimorbid patients.MethodsThe study is designed as a two-armed, double-blinded, cluster-randomised trial, involving 42 senior hospital physicians (HPs) with their junior HPs and 2100 multimorbid patients aged 60 years or older.Using a randomised minimisation strategy, senior HPs will be assigned to either intervention or control group. Following instructions of the study team, the senior HPs in the intervention group will teach their junior HPs how to integrate a simple medication review tool combined with a defined communication strategy into their ward’s discharge procedure. The untrained HPs in the control group will provide data on usual care, and their patients will be discharged following usual local routines.Primary outcome is the time until readmission within 6 months after discharge, and secondary outcomes cover readmission rates, number of emergency and GP visits, classes and numbers of drugs prescribed, proportions of potentially inappropriate medications, and the patients’ quality of life after discharge. Additionally, the characteristics of both the HPs as well as the patients will be collected before the intervention. Process evaluation outcomes will be assessed parallel to the ongoing core study using qualitative research methods.DiscussionSo far, interventions to reduce polypharmacy are still scarce at the crucial interface between HPs and GPs. To our knowledge, this trial is the first to analyse the combination of a brief deprescribing intervention with a standardised communication strategy at hospital discharge and in the early post-discharge period.Trial registrationISRCTN, ISRCTN18427377. Registered 11 January 2018Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13012-018-0839-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic forced hospitals to redistribute resources for the treatment of patients with COVID-19, yet the impact on elective and emergency inpatient procedure volumes is unclear. Methods: We analyzed anonymized data on 234,921 hospitalizations in 2017-2020 (55.9% elective) from a big Swiss health insurer. We used linear regression models to predict, based on pre-pandemic data, the expected weekly numbers of procedures in 2020 in the absence of a pandemic and compared these to the observed numbers in 2020. Compensation effects were investigated by discretely integrating the difference between the two numbers over time. Results: During the first COVID-19 wave in spring 2020, elective procedure numbers decreased by 52.9% (95% confidence interval -64.5% to -42.5%), with cardiovascular and orthopedic elective procedure numbers specifically decreasing by 45.5% and 72.4%. Elective procedure numbers normalized during summer with some compensation of postponed procedures, leaving a deficit of -9.9% (-15.8% to -4.5%) for the whole year 2020. Emergency procedure numbers also decreased by 17.1% (-23.7% to -9.8%) during the first wave, but over the whole year 2020, net emergency procedure volumes were similar to control years. Conclusion: Inpatient procedure volumes in Switzerland decreased considerably in the beginning of the pandemic but recovered quickly after the first wave. Still, there was a net deficit in procedures at the end of the year. Health system leaders must work to ensure that adequate access to non-COVID-19 related care is maintained during future pandemic phases in order to prevent negative health consequences.