Urs Brügger

Bern University of Applied Sciences | BFH · Departement of Health Professions

Aim: To estimate the health economic impact of osteosynthesis (OS) in fracture care over six decades in 17 high-income countries. Patients & methods: Applying a decision tree model, we assumed a hypothetical absence of OS and compared OS (intervention) with conservative treatment (CONS; comparator). We included patients with femur, tibia and radius...

Objectives: Sixty years ago, the Association of Osteosynthesis (AO) was founded with the aim to improve fracture treatment and has since grown into one of the largest medical associations worldwide. Aim of this study was to evaluate AO's impact on science, education, patient care and the MedTech business. Design/methods: Impact evaluations were...

The healthcare sector is booming. In many areas the Swiss health system tends to provide excessive medical care and, thus, generates overuse and waste. In others however, medical care is insufficient. “Economisation” is often blamed for both misdevelopments. People talk about false incentives and commodification, but they also talk about excessive...

BACKGROUND Pharmacologic pre- and postconditioning with sevoflurane compared with total IV anesthesia in patients undergoing liver surgery reduced complication rates as shown in 2 recent randomized controlled trials. However, the potential health economic consequences of these different anesthesia regimens have not yet been assessed. METHODS An ex...

Objective: We aimed to determine the association between the stepwise increase in the sustained viral response (SVR) and Swiss and United States (US) market prices of drug regimens for treatment-naive, genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in the last 25 years. We identified the following five steps in the development of HCV treatme...

Table A in S1 File: Data set: SVR, Swiss costs (USD), United States (US) costs (USD), cost per SVR in Switzerland (USD), costs per SVR in US (USD), stepping stones dummy variables. Table B in S1 File: The Swiss incremental costs per additional percentage point of SVR regression coefficients. Table C in S1 File: The Swiss incremental costs per addit...

Introduction: Inadequate nutrition has a severe impact on health in India. According to the WHO, iron deficiency is the single most important nutritional risk factor in India, accounting for more than 3% of all disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost. We estimate the social costs of iron deficiency anemia (IDA) in 6-59-month-old children in In...

Questions under study: Evidence-based recommendations play an important role in medical decision-making, but barriers to adherence are common. In Switzerland, the Swiss Medical Board (SMB) publishes evidence reports that conclude with recommendations. We assessed the impact of two SMB reports on service provision (2009: Recommendation of conservat...

Ziel dieser Studie ist die ökonomische Beurteilung der Vor- und Nachteile der Einführung von öffentlichen kantonalen oder regionalen Krankenkassen (KRK) in der Schweiz als alleinige Anbieter der obligatorischen Krankenversicherung nach KVG. Damit würden die privaten Krankenkassen und der Wettbewerb zwischen diesen Kassen auf dem Markt der obligator...

To identify factors associated with the decisions of the Federal Department of Home Affairs concerning coverage with evidence development (CED) for contested novel medical technologies in Switzerland. Quantitative, retrospective, descriptive analysis of publicly available material and prospective, structured, qualitative interviews with key stakeho...

Recently the decision-making committee of the compulsory Swiss accident insurance scheme needed to make a basic decision as to whether to fund hand transplantation under that scheme or not. A Health Technology Assessment was commissioned to inform decision-making and gain experience with applicability of the method. The following were main findings...

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess incidence, time frame, and outcome of "Coverage with Evidence Development" (CED) decisions in the Swiss Basic Health Insurance scheme. Methods: Analysis of all controversial medical technologies submitted to review by the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) from 1996 to 2012 with focus on...

Micronutrient deficiencies (MNDs) are a chronic lack of vitamins and minerals and constitute a huge public health problem. MNDs have severe health consequences and are particularly harmful during early childhood due to their impact on the physical and cognitive development. We estimate the costs of illness due to iron deficiency (IDA), vitamin A de...

Emergency departments (EDs) are increasingly overcrowded by walk-in patients. However, little is known about health-economic consequences resulting from long waiting times and inefficient use of specialised resources. We have evaluated a quality improvement project of a Swiss urban hospital: In 2009, a triage system and a hospital-associated primar...

This article seeks to describe online tools for surveying and improving quality of life for people with disabilities living in assisted living centers and special education service organizations. Ensuring a decent quality of life for disabled people is an important welfare state goal. Using well-accepted quality of life conceptions, online diagnost...

Micronutrient (MN) deficiency is a common public health problem, specifically for infants and children, in many low and middle income countries. For example, anemia (caused by iron deficiency) or increased infection rates and mortality (exacerbated by vitamin A and zinc deficiency) are serious threats for child development [1]. The first two years...

Current evidence indicates that chronic kidney disease (CKD) can be detected by simple laboratory tests. This study aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of microalbuminuria screening and subsequent treatment in different populations. Cost-effectiveness of microalbuminuria screening in a cohort of simulated subjects aged ≥50 years was assessed u...

Low back pain (LBP) is the most prevalent health problem in Switzerland and a leading cause of reduced work performance and disability. This study estimated the total cost of LBP in Switzerland in 2005 from a societal perspective using a bottom-up prevalence-based cost-of-illness approach. The study considers more cost categories than are typically...

Conclusion Applying current Swiss treatment costs to a CE simulation model comparing standard of care of RA in Switzerland with an alternative sequence additionally containing TCZ at the beginning results in an ICER of CHF 75,239 per QALY in the tDMARD-IR group and CHF 65,795 per QALY in the TNF-IR group. Transferring the CE threshold of the Englis...

The goal of this study is a cost benefit analysis (CBA) of road accident prevention measures realized in Switzerland in the period from 1975 to 2007. The actual number of road accident casualties is estimated by combining police report and accident insurer data. The societal cost of road accidents (direct costs, productivity losses and intangible c...

To assess the treatment costs of patients with heart failure in an integrated care model, we evaluated a Swiss primary care disease-management programme (DMP). METHODS: We compared the direct medical costs per patient before joining the DMP (time interval 1: 365 days) with the direct medical costs per patient during attendance at the programme (ti...

To summarize evidence about (1) the costs of limited health literacy (HL) and (2) the cost-effectiveness of interventions to improve limited HL. We performed a systematic review searching electronic databases and additional information resources. We included observational studies and interventional studies with HL-outcomes. We included populations...

In einer Pilot-Studie untersuchten wir die Auswirkungen einer vernetzten Betreuung auf die Behandlungskosten am Beispiel eines Disease-Management-Programms (DMP) bei Patienten mit Herzinsuffizienz aus der Schweizer Grundversorgung. Methodik: Die direkten medizinischen Kosten vor Teilnahme am DMP (Zeitintervall 1:365 Tage) wurden mit den direkten me...

The Market as an Object of AttachmentPutting the Market on ScreenThe Market as a Deep and Liquid ObjectTheorizing the Self as Structure of WantingsThe Institutional Translation of the Lack-Wanting StructureThe Market as an Object That Can Be Entered by Traders

Der Artikel untersucht Integrationsmuster globaler Finanzmärkte auf der Basis von Daten, die auf den Handelsetagen des Interbank-Währungshandels globaler Banken erhoben wurden. Für diese Muster wird der Begriff Globale MikroStrukturen eingefuhrt. Wir argumentieren, dass Mechanismen der Interaktionsordnung solche Märkte aufspannen und konstitutiv fü...

INHABITING TECHNOLOGY The global lifeform of financial markets This paper focuses on institutional currency transactions as a global lifeform that inhabits technology during waking hours, is distributed across the three major time zones, and is nonetheless centred in and on itself – the lifeform constituted by the respective markets and participant...

Le présent article s’intéresse au marché des changes en tant que forme de vie globale qui habite la technologie. Elle est distribuée sur les trois principaux fuseaux horaires et est néanmoins centrée en et sur elle-même : sur la forme de vie constituée par les marchés respectifs et ceux qui y participent. Les auteurs soutiennent que la distribution...

This article focuses upon the construction of wants and the embodying of the market in the work routines of workers on the Swiss foreign exchange market. The authors are particularly concerned with the role of the computer screen within the establishment of postsocial relations around a sense of embodied lack. The screen does not provide access to...

What will 21 st-century global social forms be like? In this article, we focus on the 'candidate system': this emerged in the late 19705 from the world of nation states, a world from which it has disembedded but on whose existence it thrives, foreshadowing things to come in other areas (though the lifeform may also simply disappear under certain re...

Using participant-observation data, interviews, and trading transcripts drawn from interbank currency trading in global investment banks, this article examines regular patterns of integration that characterize the global social system embedded in economic transactions. To interpret these patterns, which are global in scope but microsocial in charac...

Using participant-observation data, interviews, and trading transcripts drawn from interbank currency trading in global investment banks, this article examines regular patterns of integration that characterize the global social system embedded in economic transactions. To interpret these patterns, which are global in scope but microsocial in charac...

Argues that informational arrangement may make an organization less of a cumbersome machine by exteriorizing organizational processes on screen, making them transparent, witnessable and (reflexively) selfchanging.The platform organization addresses how some organizations - global investment banks engaged in institutional currency trading and big sc...

This paper rests on the assumption of an increased presence and relevance of object worlds in the social world. It holds that this influx of object worlds coincides with changing patterns of human relatedness that can be glossed by the notion postsocial forms. Postsocial forms include object-relationships where the objects are non-human entities. O...