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At least 829 records · Page 46Linked to original sources
PubMed1985

The impact of cost sharing on emergency department use.

We studied the effect of insurance coverage on the use of emergency department services, using data from a national trial of cost sharing in health insurance. A total of 3973 persons below the age of 62 years were randomly assigned to fee-for-service health insurance plans with coinsurance rates of 0, 25, 50, or 95 per cent, subject to an income-related upper limit on out-of-pocket expenses. Persons with no cost sharing had emergency department expenses that were 42 per cent higher than those for persons on the 95 per cent plan (P less than 0.01) and about 16 per cent higher than those for persons with smaller amounts of cost sharing. Without cost sharing, emergency department visits for less serious diagnoses (e.g., abrasions) increased three times as much as did visits for more serious diagnoses (e.g., lacerations). After control for insurance, persons in the lower third of the income distribution had emergency department expenses that were 64 per cent higher than those in the upper third (P less than 0.001) and received a greater proportion of their ambulatory care in the emergency department. We conclude that the absence of cost sharing results in significantly greater emergency department use than does insurance with cost sharing. A disproportionate amount of the increased use involves less serious conditions.

Ambulatory Care↗
PubMed2000

The quality of care and influence of double health care coverage in Catalonia (Spain).

AIMS: To analyse inequalities by social class in children's access to and utilisation of health services in Catalonia (Spain), private health insurance coverage, and certain aspects of the quality of care received. DESIGN: Cross sectional study using data from the 1994 Catalan Health Interview Survey. SETTING: Child population of Catalonia. PARTICIPANTS: A representative sample of non-institutionalised children younger than 15 years (n = 2433). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Health services utilisation, perceived health, type of health insurance (only National Health System (NHS) or both NHS and private health insurance), and social class. RESULTS: No inequalities by social class were found for the utilisation of health care services provided by the NHS among children in most need. Double health care coverage does not influence the social pattern of visits. Nevertheless, social inequalities still remain in the use of those health services provided only partially by the NHS (dentist) and when characteristics of the last consultation are taken into account. That is, subjects who paid for a private service waited an average of 14.8 minutes less than those whose visit was paid for by the NHS only. CONCLUSION: Equitable access and use of medical care services in relation to need, regardless of the type of insurance and social class of their children and families, has been achieved in this region of Spain; differences by social class remain for those services incompletely covered by national health insurance and aspects of the quality of care provided.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Medicare and state health care programs: fraud and abuse; safe harbors for protecting health plans--HHS. Interim final rule with request for comment.

In accordance with section 14 of the Medicare and Medicaid Patient and Program Protection Act of 1987, this interim final rule establishes two new safe harbors and amends one existing safe harbor to provide protection for certain health care plans, such as health maintenance organizations and preferred provider organizations. The first new provision protects certain incentives to enrollees (including waiver of coinsurance and deductible amounts) paid by health care plans. The second new provision protects certain negotiated price reduction agreements between health care plans and contract health care providers. Finally, an existing safe harbor has been amended to protect certain agreements entered into between hospitals and Medicare SELECT insurers. These safe harbors specifically set forth various standards and guidelines that, if met, will result in the particular arrangement being protected from criminal prosecution or civil sanctions under the anti-kickback provisions of the statute.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S.↗
PubMed2004

Estimating the cost of cancer: results on the basis of claims data analyses for cancer patients diagnosed with seven types of cancer during 1999 to 2000.

PURPOSE: Cancer accounts for 60.9 billion dollars in direct medical costs and 15.5 billion dollars for indirect morbidity costs. These estimates are derived primarily from national surveys or Federal databases. We derive estimates of the costs of cancer using administrative databases, which include claims and employment-related information on individuals insured by private or Medicare supplemental health plans. METHODS: A retrospective matched-cohort control analysis was performed using 1998 to 2000 databases with information on insurance claims, benefits, and health productivity for 3 million privately insured employees, their dependents, and early retirees. Study patients had new diagnoses of one of seven types of cancer (n = 12,709). Controls without cancer were matched at a 3:1 ratio by demographics. A variable follow-up length was used (maximum of 2 years). Direct costs included health care costs for patients and deductibles and copayments for caregivers. Indirect costs of work absence and short-term disability (STD) were calculated for a subgroup of cancer patients and caregivers. RESULTS: Mean monthly health care costs ranged from 2,187 dollars for prostate cancer to 7,616 dollars for pancreatic cancer, most often driven by hospitalization. Costs for controls were 329 dollars per month. Indirect morbidity costs to employees with cancer averaged 945 dollars, a result of a mean monthly loss of 2.0 workdays and 5.0 STD days. CONCLUSION: The economic burden of cancer is substantial. It is feasible to derive tumor-specific estimates of direct and indirect costs for large numbers of cancer patients using administrative databases. Policy makers charged with providing annual cost-of-cancer estimates should incorporate data obtained from a broad range of sources.

Aged↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Infliximab drug and infusion costs among patients with Crohn's disease in a commercially-insured setting.

Significant attention has been paid to the cost of treating patients with anti-TNF agents for diseases including Crohn's disease (CD). To evaluate the actual expenditures for infliximab in routine clinical practice, the authors examined patterns of administration and reimbursement among commercially-insured patients receiving infliximab for CD. Integrated pharmacy and medical claims data were obtained from 78 US health plans. Data from CD patients treated with infliximab between June 2000 and December 2003 were analyzed. Each claim for an infusion (HCPCS code J1745) represented a single observation. Descriptive statistics were generated for the number of vials billed for each infusion, total charged amount (ie, the amount submitted by providers), and total paid amount (ie, the amount reimbursed by the health plan, net of any patient copayment, coinsurance, or deductible). A total of 2230 CD patients were identified; of the original total of 9724 infusions, 168 were not evaluable because of data quality issues, yielding cost evaluation for 9556 total infusions. At each infusion, claims for a mean (SD) of 4.79 (1.74) vials were submitted (median = 5). Corresponding charged amounts were 4441 dollars (1778 dollars) (median = 4099 dollars); paid amounts averaged 2793 dollars (990 dollars) (median = 2628 dollars). Charged and paid amounts per vial billed averaged 927 dollars and 583 dollars, respectively. The average cost of administering a dose of infliximab to a commercial insurer is approximately 2800 dollars. Assumptions regarding infusion costs for infliximab based on charged amounts may be misleading; the true costs of administering infliximab in routine practice are likely to be lower than that reported for charged amounts.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Benefit plan design and prescription drug utilization among asthmatics: do patient copayments matter?

The ratio of controller-to-reliever medication use has been proposed as a measure of treatment quality for asthma patients. In this study we examine the effects of plan-level mean out-of-pocket asthma medication patient copayments and other features of benefit plan design on the use of controller medications alone, controller and reliever medications (combination therapy), and reliever medications alone. The 1995--2000 MarketScan claims data were used to construct plan-level out-of-pocket copayment and physician/practice prescriber preference variables for asthma medications. Separate multinomial logit models were estimated for patients in fee-for-service (FFS) and non-FFS plans relating benefit plan design features, physician/practice prescribing preferences, patient demographics, patient comorbidities, and county-level income variables to patient-level asthma treatment patterns. We find that the controller-to-reliever ratio rose steadily over 1995--2000, along with out-of-pocket payments for asthma medications, which rose more for controllers than for relievers. After controlling for other variables, however, plan-level mean out-of-pocket copayments were not found to have a statistically significant influence on patient-level asthma treatment patterns. On the other hand, physician/practice prescribing patterns strongly influenced patient-level treatment patterns. There is no strong statistical evidence that higher levels of out-of-pocket copayments for prescription drugs influence asthma treatment patterns. However, physician/practice prescribing preferences influence patient treatment.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Implications of HMOs for rural providers and consumers.

The impact of the six HMOs studied on rural providers has, to this point, been relatively small. To expand their provider networks in rural areas, the HMOs have been responsive to provider concerns, implementing payment arrangements and utilization management approaches that are acceptable to most rural providers. However, at some sites, changes in HMO and provider relations appear to be on the horizon. These changes include the acceptance of greater financial risk by rural providers and the more aggressive management of costs by the HMOs. With respect to employers, the impact of HMOs have been largely positive. The presence of HMOs in the rural study areas has provided rural employers with new options for structuring health benefits programs. According to some rural employers, health insurance costs have been reduced, or at least constrained, as a result. Rural employers have dealt with employee concerns about access limitations by demanding that HMOs offer broad provider networks and products that permit the use of non-network providers subject to co-payments and deductibles. The impact on rural employees, as evidenced by their responses as well as the views of their employers, has been mixed. Rural employees generally appreciate the broader benefit coverage offered by HMOs as well as reduced paperwork and, sometimes, lower required out-of-pocket contributions toward premiums. However, as with their urban counterparts, rural employees are concerned about restrictions on access to providers of their choice and financial incentives in physician payment arrangements that may discourage the provision of services or the arrangement of referrals.

Economic Competition↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Impact of the limited generalist (no hospital, no procedures) model on the viability of family practice training.

BACKGROUND: Some doubt the desirability and cost-effectiveness of continuing to provide an expanded scope of primary care practice. Additionally, there has been concern about declining reimbursement from Medicaid and Medicare. Although an expanded scope of patient care services are required for training, we wanted to determine whether these services drain resources and time from other primary care activities. METHODS: To determine the financial impact of deleting services other than office visits from an urban primary care practice, we tabulated charges, economic case mix, and actual collections during 12 consecutive months. Using regional and national norms, the practice set charges for hospital services, office visits, and procedures at approximately 50th percentile as a maximum. Common diagnostic and therapeutic procedures were tabulated, and gross charges per item per year were tabulated. To validate net collection predictions for a predominately TennCare (Medicaid) practice and compare these with projected net collections from private practice, charges were compared with projected collections using two expectations (40% net and 80% net). Overall collections were projected and then compared with actual collection. For hospital services and office procedures, costs were attributed to equipment, training, liability insurance, and lost opportunity for office visits. The setting was an urban family practice teaching program providing hospital services, hospital deliveries, newborn care, office visits, and a variety of office procedures. There were 30,262 office visits, 510 non-pregnant hospitalizations, 252 deliveries, 1,352 office radiographs, and a variety of common office-based diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, such as electrocardiograms (408), skin surgeries (265), gastrointestinal endoscopies (306), diagnostic obstetric sonograms (525), non-stress tests (95), and colposcopy (161). The main outcome measures were the financial values calculated after subtracting costs for hospitalist services, office visits, and procedures. RESULTS: After lost opportunities for office visits are deducted, hospital services created positive revenue ranging from $167,306 to $340,612, depending on the net collection scenario chosen (ie, worst case versus best case). CONCLUSIONS: Revenue was adequate for reimbursement of equipment, staff, and physician time in either case. For procedural activities in the office, there was a net gain of $372,974 in charges once opportunities for lost office visits were deducted. Even within the 40% net collection scenario, revenue was more than adequate to pay for overhead and equipment. For this practice with 84% Medicaid-Medicare accounts, projected collections of 40% underestimated slightly the actual net revenue.

Clinical Competence↗
PubMed2002

The effects of drug subsidies on out-of-pocket prescription drug expenditures by seniors: regional evidence from Canada.

Between 1970 and 1986, all Canadian provinces introduced some version of a prescription drug subsidy for those aged 65 years or over and since 1986, all the provinces have increased copayments or deductibles to some degree. Employing a first-order approximation to the welfare gains from a subsidy, we find evidence that these subsidies have been less redistributive than an absolute per household cash transfer but slightly more redistributive than a transfer that would increase each household's income by the same percentage. Such evidence may have relevance for predicting the redistributive effects of a potential national prescription drug plan for seniors in the US.

Aged↗
PubMed2003

Healthcare-financing reforms in transitional society: a Shanghai experience.

Since the 1950s, China has had a very wide coverage of healthcare service at the local level. In urban areas, the employment-based healthcare-insurance schemes (Government Insurance Scheme and Labour Insurance Scheme) worked hand in hand with the full employment policy of the Government, which guaranteed basic care for almost every urban resident. However, since the economic reforms of the early 1980s, China's healthcare system has met great challenges. Some came from the reform of the labour system, and other challenges came from the introduction of market forces in the healthcare sector. The new policy of the Chinese Government on the Urban Employees' Basic Health Care Insurance is to introduce a cost-sharing plan in urban China. Like other major social policy changes, this new health policy also has a great impact on the lives of the Chinese people. Affordability has been the major concern among urban residents. Shanghai implemented the cost-sharing healthcare policy in the spring of 2001. It may be too early to assess the pros and cons of the new policy, but evidence shows that the employment-based health-insurance scheme excludes those at high risk and in most need. It is argued that the cost-sharing healthcare system will limit access by some people, especially those who are most vulnerable to the consequences of ill health and those in low-income groups, unless the deductibles vary according to income and unless low-income groups are exempt from paying premiums and deductibles.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

A lifetime perspective on proposals for financing nursing home care.

In this paper data from the National Mortality Followback Survey and the National Nursing Home Survey are used to estimate the lifetime cost of nursing home care. The expected discounted cost for persons turning 65 in 1990 is $27,600. However, variation around this average is high. The 9% of persons expected to use at least 5 years of nursing home care will account for 64% of aggregate cost for the cohort; the 68% using less than 3 months of care will account for only about 1% of cost. The percentage of costs covered under alternative financing strategies also varies widely. An entitlement covering the first 3 months of care subject to 30% coinsurance would cover 5% of aggregate cost; an entitlement with a 2-year deductible and the same coinsurance would cover 41% of cost.

Aged↗
PubMed1995

"Auctoritas" psychiatric expert system shell.

We present a short description of a complex psychiatric computer expert system, including functions that help the physicians and the hospital staff in the administrative, diagnostic, therapeutic, statistical, and scientific work. There are separate data-storing, health insurance-supporting, or simple advisory programs, but we can not avail a system--in our country--that provides us with all these functions together. Hence the aim of our program is to produce a universal computer system that makes the patients' long distance follow-up possible. Our diagnostic expert system shell, which is appropriate for using the symptoms and criteria scheme of the internationally accepted diagnostic systems such as DSM and ICD, helps to archive homogeneous, up-to-date psychiatric nosology; this is essential for the correct diagnostic, statistical, and scientific work. Let us introduce our expert system. It consists of four parts: administration, diagnostic decision support system, activities concerning treatment, and statistics. The part called "Administration" contains all data about actual and emitted in-patients and out-patients, including their particulars and data necessary for health insurance (duration of treatment, diagnosis); here we find and edit medical documents. The most important part of the "Auctoritas" system is the "Diagnostic decision support system." In practice, expert systems use decision trees with yes-no logic, fuzzy logic, and pattern matching on the basis of the method of deduction; and backward chaining or forward chaining on the basis of the direction of deduction. Our system uses the methods of fuzzy logic and backward chaining. In other medical disciplines, good results are achieved by applying the pattern matching method; to make validity and verification researches, however, these systems are inappropriate. The diagnoses relying on the up-to-date psychiatric diagnostic systems--DSM-IV and ICD-X--are based on classical logic and can be correctly validated and verified. Hence we have chosen the fuzzy logic, which is the up-to-date extension of classical logic and influences the validity and verification researches, for the construction of our system. The diagnostic part is a shell that can be filled up optionally with knowledge bases of the DSM-IV, ICD-X, or other diagnostic systems and has the following structure. The diagnostic course is biphased as we can differ symptoms and criteria (duration of the illness, aethyological factors). We managed to extend the traditional applications using yes-no logic with three factors that make the system more sensitive and flexible. These are the scaling, sorting by importance of symptoms, and reliability-validity results. The "scaling" means that the physician scales the input symptoms by severity; this influences the statistical probability of the possible diagnoses. "Sorting by importance" is gauging certain symptoms by importance in a syndrome. Finally the third point, "reliability-validity results," means taking account of the latest validity values of a certain disorder of the used diagnostic system--according to the latest validity researches--and the diagnostical reliability of our expert system. The "Activity concerning treatment" is a practical part of our program that contents the examination and therapy scheduling and monitoring results. Under the point of "Statistics," we can prepare all data of the patients in various ways. In summary, the "Auctoritas" computer system is a global database managing the newly-developed advisory system; it is appropriate for managing a complete hospital network system for the continuing individual long-distance observation of patients. It collects all the necessary information of one patient in one file. The long-term benefit is that it can compile and process large amounts of information about the patients and help physicians come to scientific conclusions for research and publications.

Decision Making, Computer-Assisted↗
PubMed2003

Effects of an increase in patient copayments on medical service demands of the insured in Japan.

OBJECTIVES: To examine quantitatively the effects of an increase in patient copayments from 10% to 20% on the demand for medical services in Japan. METHODS: The subjects of the study were the employees insured by the 1,797 health insurance societies, belonging to the National Federation of Health Insurance Societies, in 1996 and 1998. Indicators of medical service demands analyzed include the inpatient, outpatient, and dental case rates, the number of serviced days per case, the medical cost per day and the medical cost per insured. RESULTS: When the effects of an increase in patient copayments from 10% to 20% were evaluated, taking into account the average age, the average monthly salary, the total number, the gender (male-to-female) ratio and the dependent ratio of the insured, the estimated change in the case rate was -6.96% for inpatient, -4.79% for outpatient, and -5.77% for dental care. The estimated change in the number of serviced day per case was -4.66% for inpatient, -5.67% for outpatient, and -1.82% for dental care. The estimated change in the medical cost per day was -3.15% for inpatient, -13.00% for outpatient, and -11.48% for dental care. The estimated change in the medical cost per insured was -14.08% for inpatient, -21.54% for outpatient, and -18.11% for dental care. CONCLUSIONS: The increase in patient copayments from 10% to 20% enabled insurers to substantially reduce medical costs by cost shifting from the insurer to the insured, with resultant changes in the case rate and the number of service days per case.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Medicare program; monthly supplementary medical insurance premium beginning January 1, 1990--HCFA. Notice.

This notice announces the monthly premium rate, as changed by the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989 and the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Repeal Act of 1989, for aged (age 65 or over) and disabled (under age 65) enrollees in the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) program for calendar year 1990. The 1990 SMI premium will be $28.60. This notice also announces the repeal of the monthly catastrophic coverage premium for aged and disabled enrollees.

Aged↗