Harris Allen Group, LLC, Brookline, MA 02445, USA.
Published: August 2012
AI Article Synopsis
Article Abstract
Objectives: To examine total health burden for an employer whose health-related focus is direct and indirect costs. To explore implications for the Final Rule for Accountable Care Organizations recently issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, whose focus includes direct but not indirect costs.
Methods: Used 42 claims and survey-based measures to track this employer's continental US workforce burden in the aggregate and by healthy and selected disease designations from 2001-2002 to 2008-2009.
Results: Starting from equivalent baselines, this employer's aggregate total direct costs decreased 16% (8.5% adjusted) whereas comparable US per capita expenditures rose 22.1%. Even larger decreases were recorded in total indirect costs. The healthy and disease designations replicated this pattern. Minimal employee cost shifting occurred.
Conclusions: Attention to direct and indirect costs helped put this employer's health care investment on a markedly more sustainable path than comparable national cost trends. Fully tapping the applicable lessons this and other purchasers have learned will be facilitated by amending the Final Rule to include measures of indirect costs.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) represents a major threat to medical practice, complicating infection management, and increasing mortality and healthcare costs. Macro estimations of this health issue remain underexplored because data are currently limited to hospital systems. This study aims to estimate the economic and human burden of AMR in Spain at a macro level.
Department of Pharmaceutical Health Outcomes and Policy, University of Houston College of Pharmacy, Health 2 Building, 4349 Martin Luther King Boulevard, Houston, TX, 77204-5047, USA.
Introduction: Despite the established effectiveness and relatively widespread availability of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder, individuals seeking treatment frequently encounter various structural and social barriers, including costs of treatment. This study aimed to understand the financial barriers that affect treatment continuation in individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD).
Methods: In this qualitative study, seven semi-structured in-depth focus group interviews were conducted among 28 participants in treatment for OUD.
Study Question: Can antinuclear antibodies (ANA) affect the subsequent live birth rate (LBR) in patients with unexplained recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) in the absence of antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL)?
Summary Answer: Women with unexplained RPL have a high probability of live birth following a positive pregnancy test (>70%), being similar between those with positive and negative ANA testing, regardless of the cut-off value.
What Is Known Already: The RPL guidelines of the ESHRE state that 'ANA testing can be considered for explanatory purposes'. However, there have been a limited number of studies on this issue and sample sizes have been small, and the impact of ANA on the pregnancy prognosis is unclear.
Background: Oral health significantly influences overall well-being, health care costs, and quality of life. In Saudi Arabia, the burden of oral diseases, such as dental caries and periodontal disease, has increased over recent decades, driven by various lifestyle changes.
Objective: To explore the associations between proximal (direct) and distal (indirect) influences that affect oral pain (OP) and self-rated oral health (SROH) status in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) using an adapted conceptual framework.
Introduction: This study analyzed the health and economic impact of the 21-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (V116) and the 20-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV20), as well as their relative cost-effectiveness, in Japanese adults aged 65 years using a delta pricing approach.
Methods: A Markov model was employed to simulate the movement of the Japanese population among 4 health states: healthy, pneumococcal disease (consisting of invasive pneumococcal disease [IPD] with or without meningitis and non-bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia [NBPP]), post-meningitis sequelae (PMS), and death. The model was populated with publicly available demographic and epidemiologic data, stratified by risk level.
