A great day filled with high-quality presentations and thoughtful, engaging discussions at today's 2nd Annual Health Economics Day at @NYU Stern. Congratulations and thanks to the organizers Amelia Bond, Sunita Desai, Michael Dickstein, Adam Sacarny and Laura Wherry.

And we’re off! NYC Health Econ Day NYU Stern begins with a great talk by Ashvin Gandhi presenting his paper coauthored with Andrew Olenski

It’s finally here!! It’s NYC Health Econ day! 😊

New research by Adam Sacarny (Adam Sacarny) in HPM found that low-cost letter interventions from #Medicare can safely reduce antipsychotic prescribing to patients with #dementia . ow.ly/6cU150Rp3Ok

This work would not have been possible under the data policy CMSGov proposed (and thankfully postponed). Under that policy, we'd need to use the VRDC, which was too expensive even with our generous NIA Division of Behavioral and Social Research grant. I'm hopeful CMS will keep listening to researchers' concerns here

A letter intervention targeting high-volume PCP prescribers of the antipsychotic quetiapine reduced receipt of this medication among their patients with dementia without detectable adverse health impacts. ja.ma/4drEHl5

Our new study in JAMA Network Open finds that randomized overprescribing warning letters safely reduced antipsychotic prescribing to patients with dementia. The paper: jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman…
Authors: Michelle Harnisch Michael L. Barnett Stephen Coussens Kali Thomas Olfson Kiros Berhane + me

We have a few spots left! Please RSVP ASAP if you want to join us for NYC Health Econ Day - can't wait to see you there!

Congratulations to CMSGov and the Administration on today's announcement delaying implementation of this change!

For the reasons we give in the quoted link, CMS can maintain data security while improving research access policies.

It's great to see CMS responding to feedback.

Lots of gratitude to the researchers who wrote about — and coordinated letters on — this issue. I'm sure to be missing folks, but: Adam Sacarny Josh Gottlieb (also @GottliebEcon.you.know.where) Lauren H. Nicholas Rachel Werner Sujith Ramachandran Anirban Basu

That said, this is clearly the start of a conversation, not the end of one.

Glad to see that CMSGov is postponing plans to end the on-site data access that has been crucial for research and policymaking. They are clearly listening to our concerns. Many thanks to the folks who pressed the administration + folks in the admin and CMS who are listening.

Wow, more construction in my building?! This is the second time today.

Earthquake in NJ!

The point is, causal claims with OLS/IV should probably always start w/rather mechanical descriptions of *what features* for *which units* you're trying to compare

This helps tremendously w/ then discussing identifying assumptions, the interpretation of estimates, and spec tests

Great thread and why I get very worried when a paper fails to correctly describe the identifying assumptions of its design

Adam undersold this! We have FIVE great paper presentations 🤩 - please come join us for the NYC Health Econ Day NYU Stern on Friday, May 3!!!

NYC Health Econ Day is coming to NYU Stern May 3! We'll have four great paper presentations with lots of time for folks to chat.
RSVP here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…
More info: stern.nyu.edu/experience-ste…
Organizers: Amy Bond Sunita Desai Michael Dickstein Laura Wherry + me

This is unbelievable!

Pumped to be co-organizing one of my favorite conferences this year :)

Empirical microeconomists studying labor, health, public, development, IO -- please submit! And please share with your networks.

A great story in The Economist about the proposed VDRC policy from CMS. It highlights how proposed access changes will hurt Medicare/Medicaid because of fewer insights from researchers.