Is there a labor shortage?

A panel discusses ongoing and prospective developments in the US labor market. Michael Horrigan points out that job losses in the COVID recession were heavily concentrated among women, minorities, and less-educated workers. In turn, these groups have shown less progress regaining jobs, and many have left the labor force. Horrigan shows that the industry connection between vacancies and wage increases is not at all tight, suggesting that traditional explanations that labor shortages are a matter of wages not clearing the market needs to be modified. Misty Heggeness notes that much of the weakness in women's recent labor force participation has been by working mothers, but that their behavior has not been radically different than in the past. Policies that address the concerns of working mothers could lessen the possibility of swings like those recently seen. Kate Bahn expands to discuss more specific such policies, including paid leave, paid sick leave, more predictable work schedules, greater income support, as well as a revival of unions, as means to not only alleviate hardship, but also to increase labor market efficiency. Michael Strain contends that federal policy greatly enhanced consumer demand, but the income support programs, along with other problems, have restricted supply, leading to some of the distortions observed in the labor market. While he supports some of the policies proposed by other panelists, he is leery about the effects of specific government programs that have been offered.

Performance Feedback May Not Improve Radical Prostatectomy Outcomes: The Surgical Report Card (SuRep) Study.

PURPOSE: Oncologic, urinary, and sexual outcomes are important to patients receiving prostate cancer surgery. The objective of this study was to determine if providing surgical report cards (SuReps) to surgeons resulted in improved patient outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A prospective before-and-after study was conducted at The Ottawa Hospital. A total of 422 consecutive patients undergoing radical prostatectomy were enrolled. The intervention was provision of report cards to surgeons. The control cohort was patients treated before report card feedback (pre-SuRep), and the intervention cohort was patients treated after report card feedback (post-SuRep). The primary outcomes were postoperative erectile function, urinary continence, and positive surgical margins. RESULTS: Baseline characteristics were similar between groups. Almost all patients (99%) were continent and the majority (59%) were potent prior to surgery. Complete 1-year followup was available for 400 patients (95%). Nerve sparing surgery increased from 70% pre-SuRep to 82% post-SuRep (p=0.01). There was a nonstatistically significant increase in the proportion of patients with a positive surgical margin post-SuRep (31% pre-SuRep vs 39% post-SuRep, p=0.08). There was no difference in postoperative erectile function (17% vs 18%, p=0.7) and a decrease in continence (75% vs 65%, p=0.02) at 1 year postoperatively. CONCLUSIONS: The SuRep platform allows accurate reporting of surgical outcomes that can be used for patient counseling. However, the provision of surgical report cards did not improve functional or oncologic outcomes. Longer durations of feedback, report card modifications, or targeted interventions are likely necessary to improve outcomes.

Development and external validation of a biopsy-derived nomogram to predict risk of ipsilateral extraprostatic extension.

OBJECTIVES: To develop and externally validate a nomogram that predicts risk of side-specific extraprostatic extension (EPE) at time of surgery, using commonly available preoperative markers. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A consecutive sample of 753 men treated by radical prostatectomy (RP) at the University Health Network, Toronto, between 2009 and 2015, was used to develop the nomogram. The validation cohort consisted of 311 men treated by RP at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, between 1992 and 2014. The study outcome was presence of ipsilateral EPE. The association between predictors considered and EPE was tested using univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses. The predictive accuracy of the nomogram was determined using the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve. RESULTS: The overall rate of EPE was 19.8% of all lobes in the developmental cohort and 28.9% in the validation cohort. Significant variables in the models were age, prostate-specific antigen and ipsilateral Gleason score, percentage of positive cores and highest core involvement (all P < 0.05). The nomogram predicting risk of EPE had a predictive accuracy of 0.74 in the external validation cohort. CONCLUSION: We developed and externally validated a nomogram that predicts the risk of ipsilateral EPE based on commonly used preoperative markers. This nomogram may be used to assist surgical decision-making prior to RP.