A simple and robust parametric shared frailty model for recurrent events with the competing risk of death: An application to the Carvedilol Prospective Randomized Cumulative Survival trial.

Many non-fatal events can be considered recurrent in that they can occur repeatedly over time, and some researchers may be interested in the trajectory and relative risk of non-fatal events. With the competing risk of death, the treatment effect on the mean number of recurrent events is non-identifiable since the observed mean is a function of both the recurrent event and terminal event processes. In this paper, we assume independence between the non-fatal and the terminal event process, conditional on the shared frailty, to fit a parametric model that recovers the trajectory of, and identifies the effect of treatment on, the non-fatal event process in the presence of the competing risk of death.

The Impact of Medicare Health Insurance Coverage on Lung Cancer Screening.

Background: Annual lung cancer screening via low-dose computed tomography can reduce lung cancer mortality among high-risk adults by 20%; however, screening take-up remains low. Inadequate insurance coverage or access to care may be a barrier to screening.

Objective: The objective of this study was to estimate the effect of nearly universal access to Medicare coverage on annual lung cancer screening.