The impact of China's retail drug price control policy on hospital expenditures: a case study in two Shandong hospitals

In China, 44.4% of total health expenditures in 2001 were for pharmaceuticals. Containment of pharmaceutical expenditures is a top priority for policy intervention. Control of drug retail prices was adopted by the Chinese government for this purpose. This study aims to examine the impact of this policy on the containment of hospital drug expenditures, and to analyze contributing factors. This is a retrospective pre/post-reform case study in two public hospitals. Financial records were reviewed to analyze changes in drug expenditures for all patients. A tracer condition, cerebral infarction, was selected for in-depth examination of changes in prices, utilization, expenditures and rationality of drugs. In the two hospitals, a total of 104 and 109 cerebral infarction cases, hospitalized respectively before and after the reform, were selected. Prescribed daily dose (PDD) was used for measuring drug utilization, and the contribution of price and utilization to changes in drug expenditures were decomposed. Rationality of drug use post-reform was reviewed based on published literature. Drug expenditures for all patients still increased rapidly in the two hospitals after implementation of the pricing policy. In the provincial hospital, drug expenditures per patient for cerebral infarction cases declined, but not significantly. This was mainly attributable to reduced utilization. In the municipal hospital, drug expenditure per patient increased by 50.1% after the reform, mainly due to greater drug utilization. Three to five fold higher drug expenditure per inpatient day in the provincial hospital was due to use of more expensive drugs. Of the top 15 drugs for treating cerebral infarction cases after the reform, 19.5% and 46.5% of the expenditures, in the provincial and municipal hospitals, respectively, were spent on drugs with prices set by the government. A large proportion of expenditures for the top 15 drugs, at least 65% and 41% in the provincial and municipal hospitals, respectively, was spent on allopathic drugs without an adequate evidence base of safety and efficacy supporting use for cerebral infarction. Control of retail prices, implemented in isolation, was not effective in containing hospital drug expenditures in these two Chinese hospitals. Utilization, more than price, determined drug expenditures. Improvement of rational use of drugs and correcting the present incentive structure for hospitals and drug prescribers may be important additional strategies for achieving containment of drug expenditures.     

A description of outpatient drug use in rural China: evidence of differences due to insurance coverage

This paper describes the effects of health financing systems (insurance) on outpatient drug use in rural China. 1320 outpatients were interviewed (exit interview) in the randomly selected county, township and village health care facilities in five counties in three provinces of central China. The interview was face to face. Questions were asked by a trained interviewer and were answered by patient him/herself. The main finding was that health insurance appeared to influence drug use in outpatient services. The average number of drugs per visit was 2·56 and drug expenditures per visit was 16·9 yuan. Between insured and uninsured (out‐of‐pocket) groups, there were significant differences in the number of drugs and drug expenditures per visit. The insured had a lower number of drugs and a higher drug expenditure per visit than the uninsured, implying the use of more expensive drugs per visit than the uninsured. There were also significant differences in the number of drugs and drug expenditures per visit between the types of insurance. One third of the drugs were anti‐infectives, most of which were penicillin, gentamycin and sulfonamides. The results imply that uninsured patients do not receive the same care as the insured do even if they have the same needs. The fee‐for‐service financing for hospitals and health insurance have changed health providers' and consumers' behaviour and resulted in the increase of medical expenditure. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Out of pocket health expenditures in Turkey following introduction of co-payments along with improved primary care services

In 2002, Turkey started to implement reforms in health care aiming to improve access and increase efficiency. Reforms increased health insurance coverage and resulted in higher number of outpatient and inpatient treatments at both public and private hospitals. Later, to change preference towards the use of secondary and tertiary care over primary care and rein in increasing health expenditures, a series of co-payments were instituted along with an extension of primary care services through a family-medicine system that provided free access to all. This work aims to measure the impact of these two simultaneous policy measures on out-of-pocket expenditures. We find that while contributory payments resulted in higher OOP health expenditures, especially for lower income households, the impact was small. We also observe that inability to consult a physician and to visit a hospital, especially for monetary reasons, was reduced after the policy change.     

北京市公立医院试点医事服务费调查

北京市在公立医院试点医药分开,取消药品加成、挂号费和诊疗费,收取医事服务费.对试点医院门诊调查发现,医院改变传统管理和经营模式,从关注创收转变为控制成本,从多开药转变为合理用药,门诊患者数量明显增多,多数患者对现行的医事服务费政策支持并感到满意.部分医院管理者认为采用医事服务费并取消药品加成没有真正切断医生和药品之间的利益关系,对医院和医护人员的长期影响有待进一步观察.     

医药价格改革对医疗费用和医保支出的影响——基于江苏省南京市区级公立医院的分析

目的：评价南京区级公立医院医药价格改革方案的合理性和可行性。方法：通过对南京市区级公立医院医药价格改革前后医疗费用数据的测算调研,模拟分析医保基金支出等重点指标的变化。结果：已试点的江宁区医院门诊和住院次均费用均下降,个人负担率住院持平、门诊有升有降。经模拟测算,即将推进改革的其它4个区级医院门诊和住院药占比、次均门诊费用均有所下降,次均住院费用上升,住院费用个人负担下降3.21个百分点,住院费用医保统筹基金增加支出占实际基金支出的7.74％。结论：医药价格改革减轻了患者个人负担;医保基金支出增加,风险有待防范;医药价格结构调整趋向合理,医疗技术和医护服务价值得到体现,补偿率偏高地区个人和医保统筹基金支出均增加。建议：破除“以药补医”机制,引导参保人员合理分流,推进医保支付方式改革,医保基金市级统筹、城乡统筹相结合,促进县级公立医院改革良性发展。     

Case-mix payment in Japanese medical care

The Japanese medical care system, highly rated internationally, has recently experienced a crisis that has placed a burden on all of its citizens, providers, and payers, due to the expansion of medical expenditures in rapidly aging society with the stagnant economy. To address this, in April 2003, Japan implemented a case-mix payment system, instead of conventional fee-for-service payment, based on an original case classification with 2552 groups (Diagnosis Procedure Combination: DPC), with inpatients from 82 special functioning hospitals. This system contains two parts: per diem prospective payment for hospital's fee with a three-level step down according to average length of stay for each diagnosis group, which is adjusted to secure the previous year's remuneration in each hospital; fee-for-service payment for doctor's fee based on national fee schedule. The payment system reduced average length of stay, but did not change inpatient expenditures and increased outpatient expenditures. The in-hospital mortality rate, although un-adjusted, did not changed, but the readmission rate increased mainly through an increase in planned, not accidental, readmissions. For the expansion of this system, ongoing program refinement, reflecting the results of data analysis, is indispensable.     

Drug Utilization and Costs for Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction

The study of drug experience of patients with acute myocardial infarction is part of a series studying factors that influence drug utilization in the hospital. The medical care field is more than ever aware of the associations between use of drugs, hospital costs, and quality of care. Aspects of utilization studied included variety, number, route, purpose, and cost of drugs; use of generic names in prescribing; and timing of drug orders during a patient's stay. In some of these aspects large teaching hospitals differ from small hospitals. It is especially striking that timing of drug orders differed between public and voluntary sectors; this was affected by the greater severity of disease and lower survival rate among city hospital patients. Direct costs of the drugs are low, in general, and so make up a small portion of hospital care costs. Each hospital showed a different pattern for principal purposes of medications used.

Future trends in utilization depend on interactions among social, technical, and administrative developments. Equalizing conditions of admission would smooth out contrasts in drug use between public and voluntary hospitals. Staff review of drugs in use could reduce needless variety. Cardiac monitoring devices can set up new patterns for use of intravenous drugs. Hospitals that must account for drugs under public reimbursement schemes could simplify their tasks by applying a group averaging system to most drugs.

     

基本医疗保险制度下慢性肾病门诊患者保障效果分析

目的:分析武汉市慢性肾病门诊患者的卫生服务利用和医疗费用负担等情况,了解当前基本医疗保险制度下慢性肾病门诊患者的保障效果,提出加强慢性肾病综合管理的发展对策和优化建议。方法:通过问卷调查法对武汉市6家三甲综合医院267名慢性肾病门诊医保患者进行调研,采用专家咨询法对肾脏科医生进行访谈,采用描述性分析方法分析其卫生服务利用、疾病经济风险度、灾难性支出现象、医保满意度等情况。结果:城镇职工医保CKD患者门诊服务利用较为频繁,城镇职工医保类型患者的次均门诊费用高于其他两种医保类型,新型农村合作医疗患者家庭的疾病经济风险度、灾难性支出现象明显高于其他两种医保类型。大部分患者认为当前医保门诊政策不能满足就诊需求。讨论:要加强对新型农村合作医疗医保患者的关注,加强预防教育和早期管理,完善慢性肾病医保门诊管理政策。     

Medicare physician and hospital utilization and expenditure trends.

During the period 1983-86, the period directly following implementation of the Medicare prospective payment system, inpatient hospital care declined. Concurrently, fee-for-service utilization rates for physicians and other noninstitutional suppliers of medical goods and services and for outpatient facility care rose. Medicare expenditures for physicians and other suppliers and for outpatient facility care paralleled changes in utilization. In 1987, the proportion of Medicare patients receiving inpatient hospital care stabilized, but the proportion receiving outpatient hospital care continued to increase.     

Catastrophic and poverty impacts of health payments: results from national household surveys in Thailand

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the incidence and describe the profile of catastrophic expenditures and impoverishment due to household out-of-pocket payments, comparing the periods before and after the introduction of universal health care coverage (UC). METHODS: Secondary data analyses of socioeconomic surveys on nationally representative households pre-UC in 2000 (n = 24,747) and post-UC in 2002 (n = 34,785) and 2004 (n = 34,843). FINDINGS: Households using inpatient care experienced catastrophic expenditures most often (31.0% in 2000, compared with 15.1% and 14.6% in 2002 and 2004, respectively). During the two post-UC periods, the incidence of catastrophic expenditures for inpatient services at private hospitals was 32.1% for 2002 and 27.8% for 2004. For those using inpatient care at district hospitals, the corresponding catastrophic expenditures figures were 6.5% and 7.3% in 2002 and 2004, respectively. The catastrophic expenditures incidence for outpatient services from private hospitals moved from 27.9% to 28.5% between 2002 and 2004. In 2000, before universal coverage was introduced, the percentages of Thai households who used private hospitals and faced catastrophic expenditures were 35.8% for inpatient care and 36.0% for outpatient care. Impoverishment increased for poor households because of payments for inpatient services by 84.0% in 2002, by 71.5% in 2004 and by 95.6% in 2000. The relative increase in out-of-pocket impoverishment was found in 98.8% to 100% of those who were poor following payments made to private hospitals, regardless of type of care. CONCLUSION: Households using inpatient services, especially at private hospitals, were more likely to face catastrophic expenditures and impoverishment from out-of-pocket payments. Use of services not covered by the UC benefit package and bypassing the designated providers (prohibited under the capitation contract model without proper referrals) are major causes of catastrophic expenditures and impoverishment.     

The performance of administrative and self-reported measures for risk adjustment of Veterans Affairs expenditures

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the performance of different prospective risk adjustment models of outpatient, inpatient, and total expenditures of veterans who regularly use Veterans Affairs (VA) primary care. DATA SOURCES: We utilized administrative, survey and expenditure data on 14,449 VA patients enrolled in a randomized trial that gave providers regular patient health assessments. STUDY DESIGN: This cohort study compared five administrative data-based, two self-report risk adjusters, and base year expenditures in prospective models. DATA EXTRACTION METHODS: VA outpatient care and nonacute inpatient care expenditures were based on unit expenditures and utilization, while VA expenditures for acute inpatient care were calculated from a Medicare-based inpatient cost function. Risk adjusters for this sample were constructed from diagnosis, medication and self-report data collected during a clinical trial. Model performance was compared using adjusted R2 and predictive ratios. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In all expenditure models, administrative-based measures performed better than self-reported measures, which performed better than age and gender. The Diagnosis Cost Groups (DCG) model explained total expenditure variation (R2=7.2 percent) better than other models. Prior outpatient expenditures predicted outpatient expenditures best by far (R2=42 percent). Models with multiple measures improved overall prediction, reduced over-prediction of low expenditure quintiles, and reduced under-prediction in the highest quintile of expenditures. CONCLUSIONS: Prediction of VA total expenditures was poor because expenditure variation reflected utilization variation, but not patient severity. Base year expenditures were the best predictor of outpatient expenditures and nearly the best for total expenditures. Models that combined two or more risk adjusters predicted expenditures better than single-measure models, but are more difficult and expensive to apply.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH CARE EXPENDITURE TOWARD THE END OF LIFE: EVIDENCE FROM TAIWAN

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between the health care expenditure of end‐of‐life patients and hospital characteristics in Taiwan where (i) hospitals of different ownership differ in their financial incentives; (ii) patients are free to choose their providers; and (iii) health care services are paid for by a single public payer on a fee‐for‐services basis with a global budget cap. Utilizing insurance claims for 11 863 individuals who died during 2005–2007, we trace their hospital expenditures over the last 24 months of their lives. We find that end‐of‐life patients who are treated by private hospitals in general are associated with higher inpatient expenditures than those treated by public hospitals, while there is no significant difference in days of hospital stay. This finding is consistent with the difference in financial incentives between public and private hospitals in Taiwan. Nevertheless, we also find that the public–private differences vary across accreditation levels. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rural-Urban Differences in Health Risks, Resource Use and Expenditures Within Three State Medicaid Programs: Implications for Medicaid Managed Care

This study uses Medicaid claims data for income-eligible enrollees in California, Georgia and Mississippi to compare expenditures, resource usage and health risks between residents of rural and urban areas of the states. Resource use is measured using the Resource Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS) system for professional services, hospital days and outpatient facility visits; it also is valued at private insurance reimbursement rates for the states. Health risks are measured using the diagnosis-based Adjusted Clinical Group system. Resource use is compared on a risk-adjusted basis with the use of urban Medicaid enrollees as the benchmark. We find that actual expenditures for rural care users are lower than for urban care users. However, because the proportion of Medicaid enrollees who use care is higher in rural than in urban areas in all three states, expenditures per rural enrollee are not consistently lower. Case mix is more resource intensive for rural compared to urban residents in all three states. Although resource usage is not systematically lower overall for rural enrollees, on a risk-adjusted basis they tend to use less hospital resources than urban enrollees. Capitation rates based on historical per enrollee expenditures would not appear to under-reimburse managed care organizations for the care of rural as opposed to urban residents in the study states.     

北京医药分开试点成效及启示——以北京朝阳医院为例

目的:以北京市朝阳医院为例,分析北京市医药分开改革试点三年来所取得的成效,为公立医院改革提出建议。方法:收集医药分开试点前后门诊和住院的相关数据,对药占比、次均药费、业务量、医疗质量、收入及结构进行比较分析。结果:改革第三年与改革前一年相比,门诊、住院药占比分别下降16.98个百分点和13.3个百分点,年均降幅分别为25.57%和36%;门诊、住院患者次均/例均药费分别下降21.39%和34.8%。医疗收入较改革前增加68.1%;药品收入较改革前下降14.29%。医事服务费收入达到24 350万元。检查、化验收入增加52.60%。讨论:试点医院医药分开对于控制药品费用效果良好。建议:公立医院改革下一步应朝着"医检分开"、调整医疗服务价格等方向推进。     

Financing graduate medical education: an update and a suggestion for reform.

This article reports data pertinent to three issues in the financing of graduate medical education: sources of funds for house staff support, the financing of faculty salaries for educational activities, and reimbursement bias in favor of care provided in inpatient settings. Using data from a 1979 hospital survey, we estimate that total expenditures for house-staff stipends and fringe benefits were almost $1.6 billion. Eighty-seven percent of these funds were derived from patient care revenues. Faculty salaries for educational activities added another $376 million to the cost of graduate medical education. Teaching hospitals collected 81 percent of their charges for inpatient care, but only 72.8 percent of charges for outpatient care. However, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursed approximately the same proportion of charges in both settings. The article concludes by arguing that a unified-charge system for paying teaching hospitals would eliminate most of the issues currently associated with the financing of graduate medical education as matters of public policy.     

Association of hospital ownership with patient transfers to outpatient care under a prospective payment system in Taiwan

Case payment, a prospective payment system akin to diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) has in-built incentives for hospitals to transfer inpatients to their own ambulatory care units following early discharge. This study used nation-wide inpatient claims data on a total of 100,730 patients treated in 2000 in (Taiwan): cesarean section (59,364 cases), femoral/inguinal hernia operation (18,675 cases), and hemorrhoidectomy (22,691 cases), all reimbursed by case payment, to explore the relationship between hospital ownership and patient transfers to outpatient treatment. For all three diagnoses, for-profit (FP) hospitals not only had lower lengths of stay (LOS) compared to public hospitals, but also showed very high odds of patient transfer to their own outpatient units, after controlling for institutional variables, (hospital level, teaching status, and geographic location), hospital competitive environment (the Herfindal-Hirschman index), and patient variables (gender, age, length of stay, and number of secondary diagnoses, a proxy for severity of illness). Similar, though slightly lower odds were observed with not-for-profit (NFP) hospitals relative to public hospitals. The findings support the property rights theory, suggesting that in Taiwan, institutional profit maximization motives may be driving patient transfers under the case payment diagnoses, rather than medical care needs. In NFP hospitals, their physician compensation mechanism, driven largely by care volumes provided by each physician, appears to be driving the disproportionately greater likelihood of patient transfer to outpatient care.     

Psychiatric service utilization and cost for persons with schizophrenia in a medicaid managed care program

A pre-post study design was used to look at changes in behavioral health care services and costs for Medicaid-eligible individuals with schizophrenia in a managed care (MC) carve-out compared to a fee-for-service (FFS) program in Pennsylvania between 1995 and 1998. Statistically significant reductions of 59% were found in hospital expenditures in the MC program compared to 18.3% in the FFS program. The decline in hospital costs was due to dramatic fee reductions in the MC site. No significant differences in overall ambulatory utilization were found in either program; however, ambulatory expenditures rose 57% in the MC program versus a decline of 11% in fee for service. The ambulatory cost increase resulted from a cost shift between county block grant funds, and Medicaid funds, with no additional revenues provided to outpatient providers. Study implications are that cost reductions from MC are mainly due to reducing utilization and payments to hospitals, similar to the findings for private sector programs.