International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Does capitated managed care affect budget predictability? Evidence from Medicaid programs
This study is the first to test whether managed care enrollment reduces the variance of Medicaid spending, in contrast to the focus of the existing literature on spending levels. This variance bears directly on whether budget constrained states whether budget constrained states benefit from managed care in the form of stabilized spending, leading to improved budget predictability. Capitated payments stabilize spending at the margin, but the effects may be unobservable in aggregate due to variation in enrollment, which is directly measured in the analysis, or selection bias, which is unobserved. Although the majority of Med...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - June 1, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Quality of diabetes follow-up care and hospital admissions
In conclusion, good adherence to French diabetes guidelines seems to be in line with the prevention of health events, notably complications, that could necessitate hospitalization. (Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics)
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - June 1, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Challenges for nationwide vaccine delivery in African countries
AbstractVaccines are very effective in providing individual and community (herd) immunity against a range of diseases. In addition to protection against a range of diseases, vaccines also have social and economic benefits. However, for vaccines to be effective, routine immunization programmes must be undertaken regularly to ensure individual and community protection. Nonetheless, in many countries in Africa, vaccination coverage is low because governments struggle to deliver vaccines to the most remote areas, thus contributing to constant outbreaks of various vaccine-preventable diseases. African governments fail to delive...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - June 1, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Medicare hospital payment adjustments and nursing wages
This study deals with the hospital wage index (HWI) adjustment to Medicare hospital payments, an area-level adjustment intended to compensate hospitals in high-cost labor markets. Since the HWI adjustment is based on hospital-reported labor costs, some argue that it incentivizes hospitals in concentrated markets to pay higher wages to nurses and other workers (the “circularity” critique). We investigate this critique using market-level data on the relative wages reported by nurses and hospital-level data on the average hourly wage for healthcare workers. For identification, we exploit a 2005 change in the geographic ar...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - June 1, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

The impact of expanding Medicaid on health insurance coverage and labor market outcomes
AbstractExpansions of public health insurance have the potential to reduce the uninsured rate, but also to reduce coverage through employer-sponsored insurance (ESI), reduce labor supply, and increase job mobility. In January 2014, twenty-five states expanded Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act to low-income parents and childless adults. Using data from the 2011 –2015 March Current Population Survey Supplements, we compare the changes in insurance coverage and labor market outcomes over time of adults in states that expanded Medicaid and in states that did not. Our estimates suggest that the recent expansion sign...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - June 1, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Switching benefits and costs in the Irish health insurance market: an analysis of consumer surveys
This study utilises data from consumer surveys of the Irish health insurance market collected between 2009 and 2013 (N\(=\) 1703) to examine consumer-reported benefits and costs to switching insurer. Probit regression models are specified to examine the relationship between consumer characteristics and reported switching costs, and switching behaviour, respectively. Overall evidence suggests that switchers in the Irish market mainly did so out of consideration for price. Transaction cost was the most common switching cost identified, reported by just under 1 in 7 non-switchers. Psychological switching costs may also be imp...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - May 10, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Determinants of catastrophic healthcare expenditure in Peru
AbstractThe aims of this study were to assess factors associated with catastrophic healthcare expenditure (CHE) and the burden of out-of-pocket (OOP) payments for specific healthcare services in Peru. We used data from 30,966 households that participated in the 2016 National Household Survey (Encuesta Nacional de Hogares, ENAHO). Participants reported household characteristics and expenditure on ten healthcare services. CHE was defined as healthcare spending equal to or higher than 40% of the household ’s capacity to pay. The associations of various household characteristics and OOP payments for specific healthcare servi...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - May 9, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Payment systems and hospital length of stay: a bunching-based evidence
AbstractDespite the huge attention on the long average hospital length of stay (LOS) in Japan, there are limited empirical studies on the impacts of the payment systems on LOS. In order to shed new light on this issue, we focus on the fact that reimbursement for hospital care is linked to the number of patient bed-days, where a “day” is defined as the period from one midnight to the next. This “midnight-to-midnight” definition may incentivize health care providers to manipulate hospital acceptance times in emergency patients, as patients admitted before midnight would have an additional day for reimbursement when c...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - May 4, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Skilled migration and health outcomes in developing countries
AbstractMany studies have found that health outcomes decline when health professionals leave the country, but do such results remain consistent in gender- and income-disaggregated skilled migration? To help uncover explanations for such a pro-migration nature of health outcomes, the present study revisits this topic but allows for associations of skilled migration with mortality and life expectancy to differ between male and female, and between low- and high-income countries. Using a panel of 133 developing countries as source and 20 OECD countries as destination from 1980 to 2010 allowing the coefficient on emigration acr...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - April 30, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Has inpatient hospital treatment before and after age 65 changed as the difference between private and Medicare payment rates has widened?
AbstractThe past decade witnessed a dramatic increase in inpatient hospital payment rates for patients with private insurance relative to payment rates for those covered by Medicare. A natural question is whether the widening private-Medicare payment rate difference had implications for the hospital care received by patients just before and after turning 65 —the age at which there is a substantial shift from private to Medicare coverage. Using a large discharge dataset covering the period 2001–2011, we tracked changes at age 65 in the following dimensions of hospital care: overall hospitalization rates, case mix, refer...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - April 25, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research