医院筹资成本中不可忽视的因素——表外成本

筹资成本是医院选择筹资策略需要考虑的一个首要问题。通过对筹资成本的概念与构成、分类的分析，重点阐述表外成本内涵与研究表外成本对于医院筹资决策的重要意义，提出医院只有关注筹资成本中不可忽视的因素——表外成本．积极寻找降低表外成本的途径，将表内成本与表外成本完整纳入筹资成本核算体系中，才能实现真正的筹资成本最低化的筹资策略.     

Breaking the Bank: Three Financing Models for Addressing the Drug Innovation Cost Crisis

Background

The introduction of innovative specialty pharmaceuticals with high prices has renewed efforts by public and private healthcare payers to constrain their utilization, increase patient cost-sharing, and compel government intervention on pricing. These efforts, although rational for individual payers, have the potential to undermine the public health impact and overall economic value of these innovations for society. The emerging archetypal example is the outcry over the cost of sofosbuvir, a drug proved to cure hepatitis C infection at a cost of $84,000 per person for a course of treatment (or $1000 per tablet). This represents a radical medical breakthrough for public health, with great promise for the long-term costs associated with this disease, but with major short-term cost implications for the budgets of healthcare payers.

Objectives

To propose potential financing models to provide a workable and lasting solution that directly addresses the misalignment of incentives between healthcare payers confronted with the high upfront costs of innovative specialty drugs and the rest of the US healthcare system, and to articulate these in the context of the historic struggle over paying for innovation.

Discussion

We describe 3 innovative financing models to manage expensive specialty drugs that will significantly reduce the direct, immediate cost burden of these drugs to public and private healthcare payers. The 3 financing models include high-cost drug mortgages, high-cost drugs reinsurance, and high-cost drug patient rebates. These models have been proved successful in other areas and should be adopted into healthcare to mitigate the high-cost of specialty drugs. We discuss the distribution of this burden over time and across the healthcare system, and we match the financial burden of medical innovations to the healthcare stakeholders who capture their overall value. All 3 models work within or replicate the current healthcare marketplace mechanisms for distributing immediate high-cost events across multiple at-risk stakeholders, and/or encouraging active participation by patients as consumers.

Conclusion

The adoption of these 3 models for the financing of high-cost drugs would ameliorate decades-long economic conflict in the healthcare system over the value of, and financial responsibility for, drug innovation.     

医院无形资产的核算与管理

随着我国社会经济的高速发展,科学技术的不断进步,以知识为基础的无形资产正日益成为决定医院未来命运与市场价值的主要动力,加强对无形资产的核算和管理,对于提升医院价值有着重要的战略意义和现实意义。     

Herausforderungen an die klinische Evaluation und Gesundheits?konomie auf dem Weg zur personalisierten Medizin

Healthcare systems across the globe are currently challenged by aging populations, increases in chronic diseases and the difficult task of managing a healthcare budget. In this health economic climate, personalized medicine promises not only an improvement in healthcare delivery but also the possibility of more cost-effective therapies. It is important to remember, however, that personalized medicine has the potential to both increase and decrease costs. Each targeted therapy must be evaluated individually. However, standard clinical trial design is not suitable for personalized therapies. Therefore, both scientists and regulatory authorities will need to accept innovative study designs in order to validate personalized therapies. Hence correct economic evaluations are difficult to carry out due to lack of clear clinical evidence, longitudinal accounting and experience with patient/clinician behavior in the context of personalized medicine. In terms of reimbursement, payers, pharmaceutical companies and companion diagnostic manufacturers will also need to explore creative risk-sharing concepts. Germany is no exception to the challenges that face personalized medicine and for personalized medicine to really become the future of medicine many health economic challenges first need to be overcome. The health economic implications of personalized medicine remain unclear but it is certain that the expansion of targeted therapies in current healthcare systems will create a host of challenges.     

Resource Based View of the Firm: Measures of Reputation Among Health Service-Sector Businesses

Application of the strategic leverage of Resource Based View of the Firm (RBV) directly advocates that a company's competitive advantage is derived from its ability to assemble and exploit an appropriate combination of resources (both tangible and intangible assets). The three companies that were selected were Pittsburgh-based companies that were within relatively easy access, representing healthcare service-related industries, and can be reviewed for the principles of the RBV. The particular firms represented a variety of establishments and included Baptist Homes (a long-term care facility), University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) (a provider of hospital and other health services), and GlaxoSmithKline, Consumer Healthcare, North America (GSK-CHNA) (a global provider of healthcare products and services). Through the case studies, it was found that not all intangible assets are strategic, and by extension, not all measures of reputation are strategic either. For an intangible asset to be considered strategic, in this case reputation, it must be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and non-substitutable.     

Funding breakthrough therapies: A systematic review and recommendation

BackgroundAdvanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) are innovative therapies likely associated with high prices. Payers need guidance to create a balance between ensuring patient access to breakthrough therapies and maintaining the financial sustainability of the healthcare system.ObjectiveThe aims of this study were to identify, define, classify and compare the approaches to funding high-cost medicines proposed in the literature, to analyze their appropriateness for ATMP funding and to suggest an optimal funding model for ATMPs.ResultsForty-eight articles suggesting new funding models for innovative high-cost therapies were identified. The models were classified into 3 groups: financial agreement, health outcomes-based agreement and healthcoin. Financial agreement encompassed: discounts, rebates, price and volume caps, price-volume agreements, loans, cost-plus price, intellectual-based payment and fund-based payment. Health outcomes-based agreements were defined as agreements between manufacturers and payers based on drug performance, and were divided into performance-based payment and coverage with evidence development. Healthcoin described a new suggested tradeable currency used to assign monetary value to incremental outcomes.ConclusionWith a large number of ATMPs in development, it is time for stakeholders to start thinking about new pathways and funding strategies for these innovative high-cost therapies. An “ATMP-specific fund” may constitute a reasonable solution to ensure rapid patient access to innovation without threatening the sustainability of the health care system.     

我国婚前保健服务筹资机制研究

本文从婚前保健服务的属性入手,探讨其筹资机制,为完善我国婚检制度提供科学依据。采用文献调研和现场调研相结合的方法,梳理国内外婚检筹资现状,收集福建、广西、江苏等8个调研地区婚检筹资相关数据,并对政府有关部门、婚检机构相关人员进行访谈。婚前保健服务属于准公共产品的范畴,本文从筹资水平、资金渠道、资金分配、资金支付和资金监管等方面对其筹资机制进行探讨,提出应明确婚检服务性质、建立财政专项投入机制,进行科学论证、统一婚检服务基本筹资标准,及时足额拨付婚检专项经费、加强经费监管等政策建议。     

Cross-national comparison of capitation funding: the American, British and Dutch experience.

In this paper we review the performance of the capitation payment systems of three countries--the Adjusted Average Per Capita Cost (AAPCC) system used in the United States to reimburse Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) for insuring Medicare recipients, a somewhat similar system in the Netherlands which reimburses third-party payers for insuring the entire population and a weighted system utilized in Britain for regional funding. Our review revealed significant problems with the current version of the AAPCC formula as there is evidence of the biased selection of beneficiaries and actual losses to Medicare through its use. Furthermore, several studies show that the demographic adjusters utilized in the AAPCC formula are extremely poor predictors of future healthcare utilization relative to the potential of direct and indirect health status measures. The Dutch experience with capitated funding has been similar to that of the United States. While Dutch researchers have built on the work of their American counterparts they acknowledge that further work is needed before a fully functional system is implemented. Britain's weighted system has fulfilled its original mandate to redistribute healthcare resources based on population need but recent changes giving increased influence to age weighting could reverse some of these gains. A number of proposed improvements to these risk adjustment problems were reviewed including the development of diagnostic cost groups, the coexisting hierarchical conditions model and the use of community-rated high-risk pooling. The findings from this study can help others narrow the alternatives they need to consider when thinking of introducing capitation funding or refining already existing systems.     

National Provider Identifier (NPI) planning and implementation fundamentals for providers and payers

Federal HIPAA legislation mandates that the National Provider Identifier (NPI) be fully implemented across all healthcare entities between May 2005 and May 2007, or 2008 for small payers. Starting May 2005, healthcare providers will be eligible to obtain an NPI and use these numbers to submit claims or conduct other transactions specified by HIPAA. By 2007, the NPI must be used in connection with the electronic transactions identified in HIPAA. Today, individual payers assign unique identification numbers to healthcare providers, and, in most cases, payers assign multiple identification numbers to healthcare providers and their "subparts." As a result, providers have multiple payer-specific identification numbers. The NPI is a unique, 10-digit federal healthcare provider identification number that will be used by all healthcare providers and payers and other healthcare entities involved in administrative and financial transactions associated with health service events and related activities. This article will use software and data experts' knowledge as well as the authors' NPI implementation readiness assessment work to review the impact to both payers and providers, including hospitals, clinics, and other service entities. The authors will suggest planning, budgeting, architecting, and data management solutions for payers and providers to achieve the optimal administrative simplification goals intended by the NPI, without compromising data integrity and interoperability objectives across the service spectrum of the healthcare enterprise.     

An agent-based simulation model to study accountable care organizations

Creating accountable care organizations (ACOs) has been widely discussed as a strategy to control rapidly rising healthcare costs and improve quality of care; however, building an effective ACO is a complex process involving multiple stakeholders (payers, providers, patients) with their own interests. Also, implementation of an ACO is costly in terms of time and money. Immature design could cause safety hazards. Therefore, there is a need for analytical model-based decision-support tools that can predict the outcomes of different strategies to facilitate ACO design and implementation. In this study, an agent-based simulation model was developed to study ACOs that considers payers, healthcare providers, and patients as agents under the shared saving payment model of care for congestive heart failure (CHF), one of the most expensive causes of sometimes preventable hospitalizations. The agent-based simulation model has identified the critical determinants for the payment model design that can motivate provider behavior changes to achieve maximum financial and quality outcomes of an ACO. The results show nonlinear provider behavior change patterns corresponding to changes in payment model designs. The outcomes vary by providers with different quality or financial priorities, and are most sensitive to the cost-effectiveness of CHF interventions that an ACO implements. This study demonstrates an increasingly important method to construct a healthcare system analytics model that can help inform health policy and healthcare management decisions. The study also points out that the likely success of an ACO is interdependent with payment model design, provider characteristics, and cost and effectiveness of healthcare interventions.     

Impact of new medical technologies on health expenditures in Israel 2000-07

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to estimate the impact of new medical technologies on public healthcare expenditures in Israel over the period 2000-07. METHODS: For each year, government estimates for the costs of new technologies recommended as high-priority for public funding were summarized. The ratio of projected costs of these technologies to total public healthcare expenditures was calculated and compared with actual governmental budget allocations for new technologies. RESULTS: Funding all new high-priority medical technologies would have increased healthcare expenditures by 2.1 percent per year. Government allocations for new technologies raised expenditures by 1.0 percent per year. CONCLUSIONS: New medical technologies significantly increase healthcare expenditures in Israel. Budgetary constraints have reduced their actual impact by 52 percent. This study indicates the need for an annual addition of 2 percent to public healthcare budget for funding new high-priority technologies.     

Intangible asset valuation, damages, and transfer price analyses in the health care industry

Most health care industry participants own and operate intangible assets. These intangible assets can be industry-specific (e.g., patient charts and records, certificates of need, professional and other licenses), or they can be general commercial intangible assets (e.g., trademarks, systems and procedures, an assembled workforce). Many industry participants have valued their intangible assets for financial accounting or other purposes. This article summarizes the intangible assets that are common to health care industry participants. This article describes the different types of intangible asset analyses (including valuation, transfer price, damages estimates, etc.), and explains the many different transaction, accounting, taxation, regulatory, litigation, and other reasons why industry participants may wish to value (or otherwise analyze) health care intangible assets.     

新《医院会计制度》中待冲基金科目核算探讨

新《医院会计制度》创新性的设置了"待冲基金"科目。文章认为无论购置资产的资金来源如何,只要是用于医疗服务活动的,属于医院的医疗业务范畴,都应将当期转入医疗服务中的价值损耗计入医疗服务支出,而不是按资金来源简单机械地冲减待冲基金。同时,增设事业基金—待冲财政资金科目,使用财政拨款购入的这类资产的价值损耗从待冲基金转入事业基金—待冲财政资金,待期末根据本年结余情况用事业基金—待冲财政资金弥补亏损或转入事业基金—一般基金。     

Healthcare financing in Malaysia

This paper presents an overview of the Malaysian healthcare system and its method of financing. The development of the healthcare delivery system in Malaysia is commendable. However, the strength and weaknesses of the public healthcare system and the financing problems encountered are also discussed. Cost of healthcare and funding of both the public and private sectors were also revealed. One must optimise the advantages of operating a health financing scheme which is affordable and controllable which contribute towards cost-containment and quality assurance. Thus, there is a need for the establishment of a National Healthcare Financing, a mechanism to sustain the healthcare delivery network and operate it as a viable option. A model of the National Health Financing Scheme (NHFS) was proposed.     

Paying for Cures: Perspectives on Solutions to the “Affordability Issue”

Curative therapies and other medicines considered “game-changing” in terms of health gain can be accompanied by high demand and high list prices that pose budget challenges to public and private payers and health systems—the so-called affordability issue. These challenges are exacerbated when longer term effectiveness, and thus value for money, is uncertain, but they can arise even when treatments are proven to be highly cost-effective at the time of launch. This commentary reviews innovative payment solutions proposed in the literature to address the affordability issue, including the use of credit markets and of staged payments linked to patient outcomes, and draws on discussions with payers in the United States and Europe on the feasibility or desirability of operationalizing any of the alternative financing and payment strategies that appear in the literature. This included a small number of semistructured interviews. We conclude that there is a mismatch between the enthusiasm in the academic literature for developing new approaches and the scepticism of payers that they can work or are necessary. For the foreseeable future, affordability pressures will continue to be handled by aggressive price bargaining, high co-pays (in systems in which this is possible), and restricting access to subgroups of patients. Of the mechanisms we explored, outcomes-based payments were of most interest to payers, but the costs associated with operating such schemes, together with implementation challenges, did not make them an attractive option for managing affordability.     

Integrating acute and long-term care for high-cost populations

The inadequacies of our fragmented acute and long-term care financing and delivery systems have been well recognized for many years. Yet over the past two decades only a very small number of "boutique" initiatives have been able to improve the financing and the delivery of care to chronically ill and disabled populations. These initiatives share most of the following characteristics: prepaid, risk-adjusted financing; integrated Medicare and Medicaid funding streams; a flexible array of acute and long-term benefits; well-organized, redesigned care delivery systems that tailor these benefits to individual need; a mission-driven philosophy; and considerable creativity in engaging government payers. The experience of these "boutiques" illustrates both the obstacles to, and the opportunity for, meaningful, widespread care delivery reform for vulnerable chronically ill populations.     

Beyond the public-private debate: the mixed economy of health

Can or should private organisations provide public healthcare services? What is the scope for private finance in public healthcare services? This paper reviews some of the arguments for and against public or private ownership management and financing of public healthcare services. It concentrates on health services, where non-economic values and ethical questions are as important as the efficiency considerations, and on health purchasing or funding organisations. The paper describes the increasingly complex interrelationship and forms of competition between public and private providers, purchasers and financiers in the UK health sector. It argues that the simple private/public distinction never did describe well the many different forms of financing ownership and operation of health services in any country and is now a handicap to both scientific and lay policy debate about future options. It proposes a framework for describing the main forms of ownership and operations of health services and considers the future for health service purchasing and funding.     

Hospital care financing in Brazil

This paper analyses the general characteristics of the healthcare financing in Brazil, together with major changes during the past decade in terms of the National Health System and the private supplementary component, discussing the specific characteristics of hospital care in both segments, emphasizing the former and considering aspects of their funding and regulation. This paper presents innovations in reimbursement schemes and contracts for hospital services, in addition to other factors that have prompted changes in delivery networks, ending with some brief remarks on managerial and regulatory initiatives related to the quest for sustainable healthcare financing.     

Impact of reimbursement policies on the adoption of medical devices in an outpatient setting

ObjectivesTo consider how reimbursement systems in the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain affect adoption of medical devices that facilitate care in an ambulatory setting.MethodsExamples of technologies that could be used in an outpatient setting but are predominantly used on inpatients were identified. Hospital payment systems were explored and the implications of funding policies for the adoption of medical devices in an outpatient setting considered.ResultsAlthough many countries attempt to develop ambulatory care payments, their DRG/HRG systems introduce a time lag for the uptake of new treatments and do not routinely identify and adopt enabling technologies. Arrangements to fund new technologies are often localised and inconsistent which can result in missed opportunities for savings. There are fewer reimbursement codes for outpatient procedures and this appears to present a barrier to the take-up of new technologies that reduce inpatient bed days. Current levels of outpatient fees are suited to fast, high volume, low cost procedures.ConclusionsThis review identifies attempts to improve coding tariffs, increase the frequency of updates and introduce more out-patient DRG codes. Healthcare payers need to be satisfied that new technologies are cost effective before they agree funding outside DRG based fee systems and the negotiation process would be more efficient if payers pooled expertise for reviewing cost-effectiveness evidence and fed conclusions directly to tariff setting authorities. New DRG codes and higher outpatient tariffs for cost effective technologies that enable a switch to ambulatory care could incentivise hospitals to revise care pathways.     

Healthcare finance and economics

This article is a wide-ranging overview of the field of healthcare financing, health economics and the development of financial management. It vividly demonstrates that all healthcare systems have too many demands and too few resources, and that problems can manifest themselves in different forms depending on the precise funding structure of the health service concerned.