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.

The Hispanic health paradox for older Americans: an empirical note
AbstractPrevious researchers have found that Hispanic immigrants tend to have better health than could be reasonably explained by their socioeconomic status and other demographic variables. The main objective of this study is to re-investigate the Hispanic health paradox covering the period from 1992 to 2012. Main contributions of the paper include using a data set of older Americans from the Health and Retirement Study. More importantly, we use two new measures of health. Previous research on the paradox had primarily used mortality or morbidity to measure health. In contrast, the HRS includes a measure of self-reported p...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - April 23, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Global budgets in Maryland: early evidence on revenues, expenses, and margins in regulated and unregulated services
AbstractMaryland implemented one of the most aggressive payment innovations the nation has seen in several decades when it introduced global budgets in all its acute care hospitals in 2014. Prior to this, a pilot program, total patient revenue (TPR), was established for 8 rural hospitals in 2010. Using financial hospital report data from the Health Services Cost Review Commission from 2007 to 2013, we examined the hospitals ’ financial results including revenue, costs, and profit/loss margins to explore the impact of the adoption of the TPR pilot global budget program relative to the remaining hospitals in the state. We ...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - April 2, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Rural –urban disparities in the utilization of mental health inpatient services in China: the role of health insurance
We examined rural–urban disparities in the use of mental health services, as well as the role of health insurance in reducing such disparities. Hospitalization costs, LOS, and frequency of hospitalization were all foun d to be lower among rural than among urban inpatients. Having health insurance and benefiting from a relatively high RR were found to be significantly associated with a greater utilization of inpatient services, among both urban and rural residents. In addition, an increase in the RR was found to be significantly associated with an increase in the use of mental health services among rural patients. Consist...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - March 27, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

The impact of the minimum wage on health
This study evaluates the effect of minimum wage on risky health behaviors, healthcare access, and self-reported health. We use data from the 1993 –2015 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and employ a difference-in-differences strategy that utilizes time variation in new minimum wage laws across U.S. states. Results suggest that the minimum wage increases the probability of being obese and decreases daily fruit and vegetable intake, but also decreases days with functional limitations while having no impact on healthcare access. Subsample analyses reveal that the increase in weight and decrease in fruit and vegeta...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - March 7, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Preferences, personality and health behaviors: results from an explorative economic experiment
Abstract This research note analyzes the relationship between experimentally elicited, incentivized economic preference parameters, personality traits, and three health behaviors: smoking, drinking, and physical activity. While there is a strand of economic research that uses proxy measures of risk and time preference that are not derived from an incentivized experiment and personality traits at the same time, and a considerably smaller one that uses experimentally elicited measures of risk and time preference only, the innovation of my work is to use experimentally elicited, incentivized preference measures and persona...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - February 23, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Do coverage mandates affect direct-to-consumer advertising for pharmaceuticals? Evidence from parity laws
AbstractDirect-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) for prescription drugs is a relatively unique feature of the US health care system and a source of tens of billions of dollars in annual spending. It has also garnered the attention of researchers and policymakers interested in its implications for firm and consumer behavior. However, few economic studies have explored the DTCA response to public policies, especially those mandating coverage of these products. We use detailed advertising expenditure data to assess if pharmaceutical firms increase their marketing efforts after the implementation of relevant state and federal hea...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - January 29, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Impacts of chronic non-communicable diseases on households ’ out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures in Sri Lanka
This article examines the effects of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) on households ’ out-of-pocket health expenditures in Sri Lanka. We explore the disease specific impacts on out-of-pocket health care expenses from chronic NCDs such as heart diseases, hypertension, cancer, diabetics and asthma. We use nationwide cross-sectional household income and expenditure survey 2012/2013 data compiled by the department of census and statistics of Sri Lanka. Employing propensity score matching method to account for selectivity bias, we find that chronic NCD affected households appear to spend significantly higher out-of-po...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - January 10, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Do the more educated utilize more health care services? Evidence from Vietnam using a regression discontinuity design
AbstractIn 1991, Vietnam implemented a compulsory primary schooling reform that provides this study a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of education on health care utilization with a regression discontinuity design. This paper finds that education causes statistically significant impacts on health care utilization, although the signs of the impacts change with specific types of health care services examined. In particular, education increases the inpatient utilization of the public health sector, but it reduces the outpatient utilization of both the public and private health sectors. The estimates are strong...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - January 10, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

The impact of subsidized private health insurance and health facility upgrades on healthcare utilization and spending in rural Nigeria
AbstractThis paper analyzes the quantitative impact of an intervention that provides subsidized low-cost private health insurance together with health facility upgrades in Nigeria. The evaluation, which measures impact on healthcare utilization and spending, is based on a quasi-experimental design and utilizes three population-based household surveys over a 4-year period. After 4 years, the intervention increased healthcare use by 25.2 percentage points in the treatment area overall and by 17.7 percentage points among the insured. Utilization of modern healthcare facilities increased after 4 years by 20.4 percentage points...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - December 8, 2017 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 - November 23, 2017 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 - November 2, 2017 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 - October 19, 2017 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

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 - October 14, 2017 Category: Health Management Source Type: research

Reducing excess hospital readmissions: Does destination matter?
This study tracks patient-level admissions and readmissions to Florida hospitals from 2006 to 2014 to examine whether the ACA has reduced readmission effectively. We compare not only the change in readmissions in targeted conditions to that in non-targeted conditions, but also changes in sites of readmission over time and differences in outcomes based on destination of readmission. We find that the drop in readmissions is largely owing to the decline in readmissions to the original hospital where they received operations or treatments (i.e., the index hospital). Patients readmitted into a different hospital experienced lon...
Source: International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics - September 26, 2017 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 - September 22, 2017 Category: Health Management Source Type: research