You might be familiar with economics or the study of monetary scarcity, but have you heard of healthcare economics? In this episode, we explore the daily trade-offs inherent in healthcare with Dr. Jayadevappa, whose dedicated focus revolves around healthcare economics and racial disparities between African American and white Prostate Cancer patients. Dr. Jayadevappa offers a glimpse behind the scenes of healthcare decision-making and initiates a discussion on how to address the racial disparities prevalent among patients.

This episode was supported by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and features this study by Dr. Jayadevappa.

Key Highlights:

About our guest:

Dr. Ravishankar Jayadevappa, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He is also affiliated with the Abramson Cancer Center, the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and the Institute of Aging. Additionally, he holds a position as a Core Investigator at the Center for Health Equity Research and Policy at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. 

Dr. Jayadevappa's research aims to analyze the tradeoff between economic efficiency, equity, and quality, particularly in addressing health disparities based on race, ethnicity, income, and age. He has secured over $20 million in federal, non-federal, and industry-sponsored grants, leading numerous projects related to chronic diseases such as prostate cancer, bladder cancer, obesity, breast cancer, and Alzheimer's. With over 150 peer-reviewed papers and abstracts, Dr. Jayadevappa has made significant contributions to the oncology field and serves as an editor for several medical journals. 

Key Moments:

At 3:18 “... healthcare is kind of complex and our resources are limited. So it's always like when you try to achieve one thing, excess more of equity, then you are trading off with efficiency. Or if you are looking at only quality of care, you are trading off with equity or efficiency.”

At 20:29 “...our hypothesis asked: is it true for African American patients, if they go to high volume physicians, is their quality of care naturally improved? But we found out that's not true… Then our next series of studies looked at the continuity of care. For instance, fragmented care, when they are in and out of the insurance plans or the healthcare providers. So that may be the reason…. And both recent papers concluded that lack of continuity of care was one of the driving forces of disparity in observed outcomes for African American patients."

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