At Last: The Data To Routinely Discuss Health Spending By Medical Condition

Discussions of health spending trends are constrained by available data. The National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA), maintained by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), presents spending by type of service or product and source of funds. As a result, their annual release analyzes changes primarily in these terms. The BEA National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) include health sector spending broken out by service/product categories that are similar to those in the NHEA. Each month, our Center releases a series of health spending reports in which we combine these, and other data sources, to report on health spending, prices, and employment by these same product/service categories. Naturally, we focus on these categories in our discussion of the data each month. For example, in our recent trend report we note that the jump in the health spending growth rate in 2014 was largely due to prescription drugs but the additional increase in 2015 was due to health care services such as spending on hospitals and physicians. Thanks to the HCSA, we are now in a position to analyze health care spending in terms of the medical conditions being treated, and to determine how much of the growth in spending on a particular condition is due to changes in the proportion of the population being treated for the condition (treated prevalence) versus the average cost per person being treated (cost per case or price). The data reveal which broad categories of medical conditions ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Technology Featured Health Care Satellite Account U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Source Type: blogs