evaluation findings - is pre/post sufficient?

Pre/post evaluation designs of asthma interventions are weak since absent any intevention, utilization decreases over time due to regression to mean. Convincing (at least to researchers) studies require a control group. Are the pre/post data sufficient to convince plans, medicaid officials, etc. of the value proposition?

This is a great question.  We're going to contact a few health plan Network members to respond to this question.  Stay tuned!

As you know, we struggle with this issue in our work at MCAN.  Would be interested to hear from health plans on this, but we should also look to a recent article by Ko et.al "Declines with Age in Childhood Asthma Symptoms and Health Care Use. An Adjustment for Evaluations",http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1513/AnnalsATS.201304-093OC#.Uv0ot...

You may recall that Noreen Clark was working with biostatisticians to develop a statistical method to account for the natural decline in symptoms we see among children with asthma as they age.  This method can be a very useful tool for studies in which a control group is not feasible, i.e. pre/post studies.  The method "clones" a control group, using existing data, to compare against the intervention group.