Impact of time of diagnosis on out-of-pocket costs of cancer treatment, a side effect of health insurance design in Australia.

The Extended Medicare Safety Net (EMSN) in Australia was designed to provide financial assistance to patients with high out-of-pocket (OOP) costs for medical treatment. The EMSN works on a calendar year basis. Once a patient incurs a specified amount of OOP costs, the EMSN provides additional financial benefits for the remainder of the calendar year.

The Australian Health Care Homes trial: quality of care and patient outcomes. A propensity score-matched cohort study.

Objective: To assess the impact of the Health Care Homes (HCH) primary health care initiative on quality of care and patient outcomes.

Design, Setting: Quasi-experimental, matched cohort study; analysis of general practice data extracts and linked administrative data from ten Australian primary health networks, 1 October 2017 - 30 June 2021.

Participants: People with chronic health conditions (practice data extracts: 9811; linked administrative data: 10 682) enrolled in the HCH 1 October 2017 - 30 June 2019; comparison groups of patients receiving usual care (1:1 propensity score-matched).

Physician responses to insurance benefit restrictions: The case of ophthalmology.

This study examines the impact of social insurance benefit restrictions on physician behaviour, using ophthalmologists as a case study. We examine whether ophthalmologists use their market power to alter their fees and rebates across services to compensate for potential policy-induced income losses. The results show that ophthalmologists substantially reduced their fees and rebates for services directly targeted by the benefit restriction compared to other medical specialists' fees and rebates.

Specialist Palliative Care and Health Care Costs at the End of Life.

Background/aims: The use and costs of health care rise substantially in the months prior to death, and although the use of palliative care services may be expected to lead to less costly care, the evidence is mixed. We analysed the costs of care over the last year of life and the extent to which these are associated with the use and duration of specialist palliative care (SPC) for decedents who died from cancer or another life-limiting illness.

Methods: The decedents were participants in a cohort study of older residents of the state of New South Wales, Australia.