No? They used "a within-facility differences-in-differences design to address nonrandom targeting of facilities" so they're measuring the change in outcomes at the same facility before & after takeover.
Regardless, in this case, where the ongoing harm could be very large, we have to at some point go with the best evidence available.
My standard is authors (and random internet commenters) to have an inkling of the progress in causal analysis and related progress in the last two decades.
Edit: Some resources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9300826/
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1536867X0800700...
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/miguel-hernan/research/causal-i...
From 1999:
https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/sociology/wp-content/uploads/si...
The paper performs half a dozen standard robustness checks [2]. Which exactly do you believe are missing? Be specific, and include reasons why we should reasonably expect the opposite outcome.
[1] Senior ML Researcher @ Google, top 3 PhD, etc.
[2] Placebo analysis, instrumental variables, MTE analysis, breaking down the effect into plausible mechanisms such as reduction in front-line staffing, limiting results to nursing homes owned by the same chain, etc
edit: Instead of linking random surveys on causal inference, please make a specific claim, such as "the authors should have used propensity scoring", or "causal inference studies should all be ignored." Otherwise, there's no way to have a debate.
> half a dozen standard robustness checks
My original comment isn't arguing they used tools improperly, it's an epistemology argument. It's about the limitations of what information could even be gathered from this kind of study.
That is nonsense.
This is not a pissing contest about qualifications, or a contest cherry picking research.
It is a rolling catastrophe - decades in the making - for USA people. In general it is that money is being transferred in industrial quantities from everybody to the very rich. Specifically money is getting sucked out of the health system for the benefit of a few at the cost of the many.
FFS socialise your medical system. Spread the cost like sane people and drive out the greed heads
If you can send a rocket to the moon.....
Not relevant to anything
Unfortunately, that might be what's necessary to know. I am not knocking the research quality, but there are limits on what we can conclude, and obviously other important factors have not been sufficiently isolated.
If so, I'm happy to speculate about the epistemology of tobacco studies.
They both used observational health data to create a causal conclusion on mortality. How is that not a similarity in methodology?
You wouldn't have to fork the universe. I think a randomly distributed trial would work, and could be reasonably made to work. Not sure though.
FWIW, I think we should prevent private equity in lots of places, especially hospitals.
And what additional knowledge do you hope to gain versus a study design like this one that would be justified by the much larger expense?
You wouldn't have to fork the universe. I think a randomly distributed trial would work, and could be reasonably made to work (woth Gov. help). Not sure though.
FWIW, I think we should prevent private equity in lots of places, especially hospitals.