About the Authors

Qian Gu

Affiliation KNG Health Consulting. Rockville, Maryland, United States of America

Neeraj Sood

nsood@usc.edu

Affiliation Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

Dr. Gu is currently a senior research associate with KNG Health Consulting. This manuscript, however, is based on his previous work as a post-doctoral research associate at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, University of Southern California. Dr. Gu 's affiliation with KNG Health Consulting does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. The other authors do not have any conflict of interest to declare.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: NS QG. Performed the experiments: QG. Analyzed the data: QG. Wrote the paper: QG NS.