Cost Analysis of Health Care of Outpatient Providers Employing Risk-adjustment

Jandová, Pavlína

The aim of this thesis is to investigate ways of assessing economic efficiency of outpatient health care providers. It analyzes feasibility of employment of risk-adjustment and profiling in the Czech Republic using administrative data reported to health insurance company in the field of otorhinolaryngology. First, the thesis provides an overview of economic profiling methods. Out of these, indirect standardization of costs with risk-adjustment on patient level was used in the empirical part. Next, methods addressing specific problems of health care data (in particular, skewness, excess of zero values and non-negativity) are explored. Using OLS on logarithms on positive part of the distribution, three representations of costs were estimated, based on selected risk-factors. Several patient factors proved significant in final models (specifically, age, gender, number of hospitalizations, region of residence and chronic conditions asthma, COPD and depression), however, the quality of the model is extremely poor. Reasons for dissatisfactory fit of models are various. We conclude that data-selection process is not appropriate to perform economic comparison. And care of outpatient otorhinolaryngology is extremely specific to be captured by information provided. Still, profiling of providers is performed...

guest :: login Digital Repository
		Search		Submit		Help		About